Transforming Unjust Structures

TRANSFORMING UN UST STRUCTURES
The Capability Approach
LIBRARY OF ETHICS AND APPLIED PHILOSOPHY

VOLUME 19
Managing Editor:
Govert A. den Hartogh, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
The titles published in this series are listed at the end of this volume.
TRANSFORMING UNJUST
STRUCTURES
edited by
SVERINE DENEULIN
St Edmund s College, Cambridge, U.K.
MATHIAS NEBEL
Instituto Tecnologico Autonomo de Mexico, Mexico City
and
NICHOLAS SAGOVSKY
Liverpool Hope University, U.K.
A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN-10
ISBN-13
ISBN-10
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978-1-4020-4431-1 (HB)
1-4020-4432-1 (e-book)
978-1-4020-4432-8 (e-book)
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Table of Contents
Introduction
Transforming Unjust Structures: The Capability Approach
Sverine Deneulin, Mathias Nebel and Nicholas Sagovsky
Part I
Chapter 1
The Capability Approach: Theoretical Discussion

Capabilities and Rights
17
Paul Ricoeur
Chapter 2
Necessary Thickening: Ricoeurs Ethic of Justice as a

Complement to Sens Capability Approach
27
Sverine Deneulin
Chapter 3
Structural Injustice and Democratic Practice: The

Trajectory in Sens Writings
47
Sabina Alkire
Chapter 4
Capable Individuals and Just Institutions: Sen and Rawls
63
Nicholas Sagovsky
Chapter 5
Justice for Women: Martha Nussbaum and Catholic Social

Teaching
83
Lisa Sowle Cahill
Part II Transforming Unjust Structures: Five Case Studies

Chapter 6
Narrative Capability: Telling Stories in the Search for

Justice
105
Teresa Godwin Phelps

Chapter 7
Promoting Capability for Work: The Role of Local Actors
121
Jean-Michel Bonvin and Nicolas Farvaque

Chapter 8
Enhancing Students Capabilities?: UK Higher Education

and the Widening Participation Agenda
Michael Watts and David Bridges
143
Chapter 9
Enter the Poor: American Welfare Reform, Solidarity and

the Capability of Human Flourishing
161
Vincent D. Rougeau
Chapter 10
Patent Injustice: Applying Sens Capability Approach to

Biotechnologies
Julie Clague
177
INTRODUCTION
SVERINE DENEULIN, MATHIAS NEBEL AND NICHOLAS

SAGOVSKY
TRANSFORMING UNJUST STRUCTURES

THE CAPABILITY APPROACH

Structural injustice has traditionally been the concern of two major academic
disciplines: economics and philosophy. The dominant model of economics has long
been that of neo-classical economics. For neo-classical economists, human wellbeing is to be assessed by the availability of disposable income or according to
goods consumed; it is measured by the levels of utility achieved in the consumption
of commodities. Social order is fashioned by the ways consumers maximise their
well-being and enterprises maximise their profits.1 A core assumption is that all
commodities2 are commensurable: they can all be measured according to a single
numerical covering value, which is their price.3 Within this neo-classical paradigm,
justice is achieved when the utility level of someone cannot be increased without
another person seeing his or her utility level decrease.4
The dominant paradigm of neo-classical economics was strongly challenged
when development and welfare economist Amartya Sen received the Nobel Prize for
Economics in 1998. His work offered an alternative to the neo-classical evaluation
of human well-being in the utility/commodity space. The underlining philosophical
intuition behind Sens work is that the standard of living lies in the living and not in
the consumption of commodities. In searching for an alternative measure of human
well-being, Sen devised his capability approach.
Sens capability approach characterises human well-being in terms of what
people are or do (for example, being healthy, reading or writing, taking part in the
life of the community): he talks of functionings. Furthermore, Sen considers
freedom to be one of the most basic aspects of human life. Thus, well-being is to be
assessed not so much by what people are or what people do, as by what they are free
to be or do what they are able to be or do (for example, being able to be healthy,
being able to read and write, being able to participate in the life of the community).
Sen calls such abilities capabilities.5 A capability is a persons ability to do
1
S. Deneulin et al. (eds.), Transforming Unjust Structures: The Capability Approach, 1-16.
2006 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.
SVERINE DENEULIN, MATHIAS NEBEL AND NICHOLAS SAGOVSKY
valuable acts or reach valuable states of being; [it] represents the alternative
combinations of things a person is able to do or be.6
The philosopher Martha Nussbaum has extended the capability approach by
itemising a list of the capabilities that people have reason to choose and value. This
list of what she calls central human capabilities (such as the capability of bodily
health, the capability of affiliation, the capability of exercising practical reason)7
constitutes for her the normative goal that societies should pursue and defend in
their political processes. Nussbaums central human capabilities form a more
dynamic list than, say, the rights listed in the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, but, like human rights, they are patently justiceable. A just society for
Nussbaum is a society that provides its citizens with the opportunities to exercise
those central human functional capabilities they choose to develop.8
Sens work has brought back the field of economics to where it first belonged:
within the scope of moral philosophy.9 In his concern for human flourishing, he
stands in a tradition that can be traced back to Aristotle but his more immediate
intellectual lineage is that of Kant and Mill. He stands within the liberal tradition
which does not specify any particular good as being above others (especially not any
putative common good), but in doing so makes freedom and pluralism central to
its account of human flourishing. In its commitment to the freedom of each
individual to choose in an unconstrained manner the goods which she values,
this tradition is implacably opposed to all forms of utilitarianism, which
characteristically argue that the individual is expendable in the service of the greater
good. Though Sen does not put the case in these terms, he might well accept that
utilitarianism is peculiarly dangerous, because this manner of arguing all too easily
provides a cover for structural injustice: for example, conscripts who are said in
wars pro patria mori to die for the fatherland have tended to be poor and
socially disadvantaged.10
The freedoms that each individual enjoys are for Sen both the ends and means of
development.11 He affirms that such concentration on freedom can provide a
general framework for analysing individual advantage and deprivation in a
contemporary society.12 Moreover, the presence of freedom is constitutive of the
goodness of the society which we have reasons to pursue.13 What is important for
justice to be achieved is not so much the quality of life that people are actually
living, but the quality of life they have available to them within an available set of
functionings. For Sen, a capability is, then, a set of vectors of functionings,
reflecting the persons freedom to lead one type of life or another [] to choose
from possible livings.14 Individual freedom and action thus occupy a central place
in Sens capability approach.
The capability approach has in the last twenty years become a hugely influential
theory for international social justice. For example, it now underpins the work of the
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Since 1990, the UNDP has
published annually a Human Development Reportt which documents the successes
and failures of countries in promoting the capabilities that people have reason to
choose and value. More than 120 national or regional human development reports
have been produced by local development organisations. Hence the importance of
continuing to develop the capability approach, both at the theoretical and practical
levels.
UNJUST STRUCTURES
One of the questions that has been repeatedly put to the advocates of the capability
approach has been that of structural injustice: does the capability approach address
sufficiently the extent to which lack of human flourishing can be attributed to unjust
social, political and economic structures and can it be deployed to bring about their
transformation? This is the question discussed in this volume. In various ways, the
contributors explore whether the way freedom and action have been understood in
the capability approach overlooks two elements that are crucial to engagement with
questions of structural injustice: human sociality and human fallibility. To speak
about unjust structures is to see such structures, which are necessary expressions
of human sociality, as marked by human finitude and fallibility. To take forward this
discussion, the capability approach must be brought into dialogue with approaches
that focus attention on social structures. In the essays that follow there is a particular
engagement with the hermeneutical tradition represented by Paul Ricoeur, who
was himself on this issue much indebted to the thought of Hannah Arendt, and also
with the modern social contract tradition represented by John Rawls.
Paul Ricoeurs ethics tells us that an unjust situation (one in which the
capabilities that people have reason to choose and value, such as the capability of
being fed, the capability of being healthy, of being educated, or of expressing
oneself freely, have been denied) emerges from the fragility and fallibility of human
institutions. In One Self as Another, he famously proposed his definition of the end
of ethical intentionality as the good life with and for others in just institutions.15
For Ricoeur, justice is not so much a matter of promoting individual capabilities as a
matter of promoting the institutions that will ensure the living together of a good life
and will give some protection from human fallibility.
Following Hannah Arendt, Ricoeur understands human action as a mode of
human sociality. We cannot act alone in isolation from others. Societies emerge
from this power of cooperative action: The polis, properly speaking, is not the citystate in its physical location; it is the organization of the people as it arises out of
acting and speaking together, and its true space lies between people living together
for this purpose, no matter where they happen to be.16
Arendt suggests that that the ultimate meaning of personal action cannot be
reduced to the intention of an individual agent. If the interior life of a person is
expressed and revealed by an action, the field out of which that revelation takes
place is the whole life of the polis. This embeddedness of actions in social networks
makes their outcomes essentially unpredictable. Noone can be fully in control of the
actions that she attempts to undertake:
It is because of this already existing web of human relationships, with its innumerable,
conflicting wills and intentions, that action almost never achieves its purpose; but it is
also because of this medium, in which action alone is real, that it produces stories
with or without intention as naturally as fabrication produces tangible things.17
For both Ricoeur and Arendt, human freedom is fallible: it is open to the actual,
disruptive conditions of existence.18 This unpredictable and intrinsically social
character of human action leads, for Arendt, to another essential characteristic of
human action: remembrance.19 Actions can only be understood after having been
carried out. Like Arendt, Ricoeur recognises and discusses the crucial importance of
narratives in interpreting human actions. Narratives allow human actions truly to be
apprehended; it is narratives which render human actions intelligible to others. Much
of Ricoeurs work has been concerned with the critique of narrative, a critical
endeavour which has brought him to the necessary critique of social institutions.20
According to Hannah Arendt, structures are the manifestation of the institutionalisation of human freedom. She defines freedom as the power of innovation,
Men are free as distinguished from their possessing the gift for freedom as long as
they act, neither before nor after; for to be free and to act are the same.21 This specific
experience of the power of action, envisaged at the level of a community and not at an
individual level, Arendt calls power. Power, says Arendt, corresponds to the human
aptitude to act and act in a concerted way. Power is never an individual property; it
belongs to a group and continues to belong to it as long as it is not divided.22 Power
does not, then, belong to the category of domination or violence, power is the will to
act and to live together in a historical community.23
This power becomes materialised and expressed in social structures. We can
distinguish three spheres of the institutionalisation of power in structures, or three
structured fields of action which set spatio-temporal limitations to individual human
action: the cultural, economic and political.
Social structures belonging to the cultural sphere are what we could call
essentials, for they are necessary to the structuring of the person as person,
actualising the social dimension of human being. These are the structures through
which a child is instructed about the world which is his own, and which bring him to
that age where he will be recognised as responsible for his actions by his
community. These structures are fundamentally committed to the transmission
of community, inasmuch as this community is structured, organised, the carrier of
a common history and thus a memory. These structures are committed to transmit a
savoir-faire about the world, linked to the practice of institutions that organise the
life of the community. Therefore, they have, in the broad sense of the word, an
educative function: they have to instruct the new generation so that this world
becomes their world.24 They ensure the historical continuity of a community.
The structures of the economic sphere cover the satisfaction of the needs of
human beings whether biological or to do with security, whether aesthetic or
symbolic all of those needs the satisfaction of which contributes to a persons
well-being and can be acquired by the means of exchange. It is in such a perspective
that one can make sense of Arendts study of labour as the human activity which
confronts natural necessity.25 The activity humans share with all living creatures is
that of survival: to survive within the natural cycle of generation and decay. This
permanent activity of production and consumption is sealed by necessity which, to
give it its true value that of survival is not an activity peculiar to humanity.26
Structures of the economic sphere are thus all committed to survival, allowing one to
live. They give access to well-being, to what is useful and pleasant in the realm of
that which money can buy. Among these structures, the market is the most important
inasmuch as it presides even if not exclusively over the huge processes of
production, distribution and consumption.
Thirdly, the structures of the political sphere define the structured field of action
in which humans are able to act and to act with political freedom. Indeed, life in
community, seen as the will to live and to act together, is inspired by the hope of a
good, which is the recognition of each and every one of its members in his or her
freedom.27 The hope which inspires such life is that of living-well, the content of
which is justice. We have, here, a clear distinction: on the one hand we have the
political and on the other politics. The ideal equality of everyone in their freedom
and dignity will be rationally established within a State governed by Law, whose
universality rests precisely in the fact that it applies to each and every one in that
community, and constrains their activities for the sake of justice. It is the Lawgoverned State which effectively enables there to be politics. However, the conflict
which bears upon the definition and the enactment of the good-life and of justice is
recognised as a struggle in which power is at stake. The structures of the political
sphere are thus committed by means of politics to establishing justice in the
community.
For both Arendt and Ricoeur, the structures that emerge from, or within, the
common life in a particular historical community are not necessarily oriented
towards a good common life. Social structures, whether belonging to the cultural,
economic or political sphere, are marked by the flawed humanity of those who
constitute them; they are marked by human finitude and fallibility. Social structures
can be perverted.
When for example structures of the cultural sphere are perverted, it is the very
transmission of the life of the community which is compromised. The common
world gets lost and a particular society disappears. With the perversion of structures
in the economic sphere, it is the very possibility of survival which is endangered
(through starvation, restricted access to the market, or restricted purchasing power).
When the structures of the political sphere are perverted, the very conditions of the
good-life of living as a human being disappear (as with apartheid, torture, or
genocide). For example, under the apartheid regime in South Africa, black people
were the victims of social policies and political decisions which set out to deny them
opportunities to live a flourishing human life. Apartheid survived as long as it did
because it expressed the moral framework embedded in many white peoples minds,
a moral framework also embedded in the functioning of the institutions of society.
At this level of shared assumptions, there was very little any individual could do to
overcome apartheid.
It is accepted within this volume that structural injustice is a reality. Structural
injustice has an identifiable existence of its own and imposes itself on us with a
malign and pernicious rationality. To take a simple economic example: a company
may be forced to move its activities from the UK to India to minimize labour costs
and so maintain its competitive share of the market. If it does not follow competitors
who have previously invested in low-wage countries, the company will be doomed
to bankruptcy. The laws of supply and demand impose their rationality on economic
actors with a mathematical predictability that takes little note of the human lives of
the individual human beings that are behind market transactions. To cite an even
more tragic example of planned structural injustice, the Nazi regime pushed through
the Final Solution to the Jewish Question with an astonishing bureaucratic
efficiency. The operational rationality of the genocide conferred a spurious
acceptability on an extermination programme that would have been impossible
without countless personal acts of compliance.28 In such cases, the commitment to
act together is no longer oriented towards the good life in common: it goes against
human flourishing. Structures have themselves become sinful; that is, they are
perverted from their subsidiary function as structures which sustain the good life
for all.
Under the influence of liberation theologians,29 after the Second Vatican Council
(1962-5) the Catholic Church introduced the language of structural sin into its
mainstream social doctrine, but it drew the sting of the notion by prioritising the sin
of individuals:
Structures of sin are rooted in personal sin, and thus always linked to the concrete acts
of individuals who introduce these structures, consolidate them and make them difficult
to remove. And thus they grow stronger, spread, and become the source of other sins,
and so influence peoples behaviour.30
Unjust structures, or structures of sin, were said to be rooted in personal

wrongdoing: such acts of personal wrongdoing cumulatively build a structure which
creates a reality in which it becomes difficult for human beings to amend or even
see their personal wrongdoings. The structure comes to represent a reality which
constrains individuals actions in ways over which they have no control, and often
no insight.
Theologians have identified two main characteristics of these sinful or unjust
structures, which inhibit human flourishing.31 First, unjust structures generate the
experience of an impossible choice. The person is driven to undertake actions that he
disapproves of, producing what can be called alienation. Within the perverted
structure, the person is bound to play a social role which he disapproves of but
cannot escape. There is a disjunction between what the person really is and the role
he plays in the social structure. For example, a public servant in a country where
corruption is rampant may not have been paid his wages for the last six months. His
family is close to starvation. As an honest man, he does not want to emulate his
colleagues and live by corrupt practices. He has been looking for another job in the
private sector, but, given the severe economic crisis, he has been unable to find any.
At the sight of his starving family, he finally decides to participate in the corrupt
practices by which he is surrounded. Such a person is forced into wrongdoing he has
not chosen and of which he disapproves but that has been imposed on him by
an unjust structure. He can neither change the situation himself nor escape it. In the
short term at least, and as an individual, he has no option but to contribute to the
corrupt system in order to survive. The personal and willing actions of other
members of the society before him have created a reality which imposes
wrongdoing32 on all its current members, a reality from which in the short term there
is no escape. Second, when alienation is prolonged and when the perversion of
structures in all spheres is such, people may become enslaved. The person can no
longer see his own alienation. He has been blinded as much to his complicity in the
unjust structure as to the contradiction between what he says and what he does.
Worse still, this inability to see is intensified, so it seems, by an inability, even if he
wanted but he does not to break free from this dynamic of unjust interaction.
That was, for example, precisely the situation of the South Africans of European
origin who, under the apartheid regime, seemed incapable of recognising the
scandalous nature of their practical racism and energetically rejected any change in
the apartheid system.
When injustice is institutionalised, the danger is that the individuals who
maintain these unjust structures will become blinded to the wrongdoing of their own
actions. The sense of powerlessness (one could even speak of the sense of fatalism)
with regard to what one can do individually to change such an unjust structure soon
becomes indifference. Why care about the Rwandan genocide? What could I have
done to stop it? Why care about the street child in Colombia? My having less food
on my plate in the UK (or not throwing away what I have left!) will not make one
child less hungry. Beyond indifference lies acquiescence: what can one do to
promote human development but work with the all-powerful structures of global
capitalism?33
The tragedy of structural injustice is that these structures are not amenable to
correction by the exercise of one individuals will neither is the individual free to
dissociate himself from these structures. The action of a single individual can, in the
short term, do very little to change the situation. Human beings are born into unjust
structures in which they seem to have no other option but furthering the injustice.
For individuals who suffer from structural injustice, there is no escape; there are no
good solutions. No unfettered possibility or course of action seems to be open to
them. Here we must face the question as to what an individual can do, all alone,
when faced by an unjust structure. Certainly, not what he can achieve with others in
opposition to a malign institution. For if individual action is in effect doomed to
failure, concerted, coordinated action by a group can often achieve success. One can
only, in fact, resist an institutionalised interaction by opposing it with another
interaction, that is to say by situating oneself at the same level of power.
None of the authors in this volume adopt a position of social determinism.
Underlying their critique of the capability approach is the conviction that unjust
structures can be transformed if people join their efforts together. While, in the short
run, there may seem to be no other possibility than for the perpetrators to maintain
unjust structures and the victims to suffer from them, in the long run, individual
victims have the power to unite and overcome structural injustice. Victims can join
with others in the society who are in solidarity with them, and raise an outcry against
the situation. Those within the unjust structures may become responsive (whether
in response to the outcry or because of their own moral markers) and organise
transformation from within the unjust structure. It is, for example, because of the
joint efforts of numerous individual victims of apartheid in South Africa (together

with external pressures from bodies such as those that applied sanctions and internal
pressures from white South Africans and others who resisted the system) that
apartheid was eventually overcome; or, to take another example, it is because of the
joint efforts of numerous individual women (and some men) that women have won
the right to vote. The extent to which individuals can confront and even overcome
unjust structures, and the way in which effective strategies for the transformation of
unjust structures and the realisation of human capabilities can be developed, are two
of the central issues discussed in this book.
TRANSFORMING UNJUST STRUCTURES: THE CAPABILITY APPROACH
The essays in this book were delivered at a conference sponsored by the Von Hgel
Institute in Cambridge, UK, on 26-27 June 2003, on Transforming Unjust
Structures. This was the third in a series of conferences sponsored by the Institute,
all of which have engaged with the capability approach of Amartya Sen. The first,
Justice and Poverty: Examining Sens Capability Approach, which took place in
June 2001, focused on the capability approach directly; the second Promoting
Womens Capabilities: Examining Nussbaums Capability Approach brought the
capability approach of Sen into dialogue with that of Martha Nussbaum. The Human
Development and Capability Association was then founded in September 2004 to
promote high quality research in the interconnected areas of human development
and capability, including inter alia the quality of life, poverty, justice, gender,
development and the environment.34
This volume opens with a keynote address by Paul Ricoeur on Capabilities and
Rights. Ricoeur brings together the concepts of capability and rights under the
encompassing notion of recognition, by which he means the identification of any
item as being itself and not anything else. He attributes the notion of capabilities to
the domain of the recognition of persons, and within that domain to self-recognition,
whilst he attributes the concept of rights to mutual recognition. Like Sen, Ricoeur
understands capabilities to belong to the lexicon of human action. He identifies the
ability to speak, to act and to tell (and so to have narrative identity). He goes
further by claiming that such action pertains to the assertion of selfhood at the
reflexive level, that is, to a recognition of responsibility. Because I know myself to
be able to act in this way, I am responsible for my actions. Agents are, however, not
only accountable to themselves for their own actions, they are also mutually
accountable. The recognition of such mutual accountability bridges the gap between
the anthropological language of capability and the juridical language of rights. For
Ricoeur, rights are instruments which ensure the mutual accountability of peoples
actions. Through the ascription of rights, the capabilities of people are mutually
recognised. The struggle for such recognition takes place in different spheres for
example, the social, the political and the cultural. Where such recognition can be
achieved, it brings the benefit of increased self-esteem tightly linked to increased
social esteem.
TRANSFORMING UNJUST ST
UC U
The approaches of Sen and Ricoeur are further compared and complemented in
Sverine Deneulins essay. She discusses Sens capability approach to development
as a freedom-centred view of development which is built upon three foundational
elements: the aim of development as the expansion of the capabilities or freedoms
that people have reason to choose and value; individual agency as the means through
which these freedoms are to be expanded; and participatory or democratic decisionmaking as a privileged way through which that individual agency will be expressed.
Deneulin argues that, as it stands, the capability approach is too thin to offer
guidelines for actions which could transform the unjust structures that impede
many people from exercising the capabilities they have reason to choose and value.
Ricoeurs ethic of justice is put forward as a way of complementing and
thickening the capability approach in its task of removing unfreedoms. First, Sens
reluctance to specify the valuable capabilities that are the ends of policies needs
to be thickened by a vision of the good life, beyond human freedom. The
consequentialist evaluation of actions needs to be complemented by a teleological
approach that directs actions towards specific ends of human flourishing. Second,
Sens emphasis on individuals as subjects of development needs to be thickened by
the acknowledgment of the existence of collective subjects, or of what Ricoeur has
called structures of living together. This implies the use of socio-historical
narratives for understanding development policies and outcomes, for human action
is never a-historical and detached from a community. And third, because of the
fragility and fallibility of the exercise of human freedom, policy decisions which are
purely based on the exercise of freedom in the political community need to be
thickened by procedures of decision-making which make less fragile the processes
by which the conditions for a good human life are secured.
Sabine Alkire argues that the writings of Amartya Sen themselves contain the
necessary elements to transform unjust structures. In addition to his writings on
welfare economics and social choice theory, Sen has written extensively on public
action and democratic practice. Democratic practice, complementing Sens
understanding of well-being as the fulfilment of basic capabilities, is the key
element for confronting structural injustice. Alkire begins with Sens well-known
studies of the role of public outcry in effecting positive change in famine-prone
situations. She then traces Sens use of related concepts such as public action and
participation, and the role he envisages for them in addressing injustices such as
chronic hunger and educational deprivation. She also analyses the role of democratic
practice in value formation and change. Sens work comments on democratic
practice and related actions as instruments by which to confront injustice but how
is such democratically-based action to come about? One mechanism is the selfinterest of decision-makers: politicians facing re-election must respond to popular
demands. However, many of those who operate unjust institutions are not
democratically accountable: bonds of solidarity and imperfect obligation must be
cultivated to confront them. To overcome the embedded collective action
problem, committed activists within institutions seen to be unjust need to organize
and work together for constructive change. They need to recruit committed
powerbrokers as agents of change.
10
Nicholas Sagovsky widens the debate on the capability approach and structural
injustice by introducing the thought of the most influential political philosopher of
the twentieth century: John Rawls. First, he asks to what extent Sen pays attention to
the social. He argues that for Sen, social factors are always seen to be subsidiary to
the fulfilment of individual well-being. By contrast, though Rawls is similarly
concerned with individual well-being, his primary focus remains on the social.
A Theory of Justice (1971) begins with the lapidary statement, Justice is the first
virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought. Sagovsky sets out to
bring Rawls into dialogue with Sen, asking what contribution Rawls has to make,
both to the debate about human capabilities and to that about structural injustice. He
interprets Rawls concern with justice as a concern for a polity that will enable
individuals to flourish in a way similar to that outlined by Sen. However, although
Rawls offers a programme for the conforming of social institutions to the regulative
norm of a just basic structure in society, he fails to confront the issue as to
whether certain social institutions are intrinsically unjust. Sagovsky suggests that by
Rawlsian criteria some social institutions may be seen as impervious to
transformation for the better; also, that there is an urgent need to recover the sense,
alongside Rawls primary goods, of common goods. To this end, Sagovsky
suggests a third principle of justice to add to Rawls other two: that the basic
structure of society must not work to the disadvantage of future generations. He also
suggests, as a complement to Sens capability approach, the notion of social
capability, which echoes the language of Sen but fits more comfortably with the
thought of Rawls.
Discussing the potential of Martha Nussbaums capability approach and her
work in feminist ethics for transforming the structural injustices that oppress women
worldwide, Lisa Sowle Cahill argues that if the capability approach is to achieve its
potential for improving the situation of women worldwide, it can profitably be
brought into dialogue with insights from Catholic social teaching. Both take a
universalist standpoint on values, and both take embodiment as the basis for
defining human values and obligations, but Catholic social teaching has a lot to
contribute regarding the intrinsic sociality of the person, and has a more positive
attitude towards the role of religion as an empowering factor. The Catholic tradition
has insisted that womens sexual embodiment is intrinsically social (although it links
sexuality with reproduction for women, but not for men), in contrast to Martha
Nussbaum who analyses sexual embodiment in the mode of individual choice.
Moreover, while Nussbaum sees compassion as a basic social virtue to promote
justice, she ignores the power of religion in nurturing that virtue. Finally, the
Catholic tradition, with its emphasis on the common good, solidarity, subsidiarity
and the dignity of work, has a potentially significant transformative impact on
peoples lives, albeit treating women differently from men. This contrasts with
Nussbaums commitment to gender equality and (in the Kantian sense) emphasis on
each person as an end in herself or himself. Each could thus learn from the other in
order to be a liberating force in the lives of oppressed women.
The second part of the volume deals with more concrete examples of structural
injustice and ways in which the capability approach can throw light on these. Teresa
11
Godwin Phelps examines the role of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in
South Africa in restoring justice. She particularly highlights the importance of the
capability to narrate (a capability which Sens capability approach has tended to
overlook but which Ricoeur has highlighted) in order to transform an unjust
oppressive state into a just democratic one. Remembrance and the capability to tell
stories can be a powerful instrument for restoring structures which have been
perverted by inhuman actions. Godwin Phelps argues that truth reports, by narrating
the stories of the victims, can work as a compensatory mechanism for the victims, as
a satisfying response from the state to recognise its past abuses and inhuman acts
and to open a more human and just future. She especially inquires into what stories
can do and how they operate in peoples lives, and puts forward seven ways in
which the activities of truth commissions may provide justice to victims. First,
storytelling is an essential human activity through which humans assert their
humanity; narrating gives humans an identity as persons inserted in a certain
community and history. Second, stories can balance acts of violence by giving the
opportunity to victims to recover a sense about themselves and to tell the truth.
Third, stories are ways of discovering the truth. As perpetrators and victims will
often not be able to give their testimonies in a court, truth reports can be a way of
delivering the truth that would otherwise be unknown. Fourth, stories can translate
and communicate among diverse people. In contexts of great social, ethnic and
cultural diversity, stories help to communicate between people with a universal
language. Fifth, storytelling is carnival, that is, a space in which people are
temporarily freed from the existing social structures, an alternative social space that
allows the participation of all. Sixth, storytelling is also a sacramental act, a way of
making visible what is invisible, of putting back together what was once dismantled
and fragmented. And, finally, the collection of stories into truth reports issues in
documents that contribute to the creation of a renewed country with more just
foundations.
Jean-Michel Bonvin and Nicolas Farvaque examine the particular injustices
engendered by contemporary social policies aimed at tackling exclusion from the
labour market in Europe. They analyse the relevance of the capability approach as
an alternative framework for assessing the structures to which social integration
policies give rise, and for proposing actions that would make these structures more
just. They note that, when assessed according to the framework of the capability
approach, unemployment has many faces beyond the loss of income. When
employment policies focus on the loss of income as an instrument of social
integration while ignoring the institutional framework that disallows people from
exercising the capabilities they have reason to choose and value, they fail to meet
their aim of reinserting the unemployed into the labour market. The choice of an
adequate informational basis for judging states of affairs has thus far-reaching policy
consequences. Employment policies ought fully to take into account the
consequences of unemployment upon peoples wide range of capabilities, among
which Bonvin and Farvaque single out the capability for work (the capability to
choose the kind of work one has reason to choose and value) and the capability for
voice. When assessed against the criterion of the promotion of these capabilities,
some current employment policies in Europe generate patently unjust structures.
12
Bonvin and Farvaque focus on three types of employment policies: those which
provide people outside the labour markets with cash benefits (decommodification
policies), those which attempt to make job-seekers more employable via training
mechanisms (human capital approaches to social integration policies) and those
which constrain the unemployed back into work (workfare policies). They argue that
an effective way of expanding peoples capabilities is to make employment policies
incorporate the capability for voice of the unemployed and other local actors, that is,
the capability of people to make their own concerns heard and to take part in the
decisions that affect their lives. In conclusion, some instances of the incorporation
of this capability for voice in employment policies and in the work of local
employment agencies are described.
Michael Watts and David Bridges address the structural injustices through which
young people from families with no tradition of higher education and from lower
socio-economic groups are underrepresented in the student body. They focus on the
UK Government White Paper The Future of Higher Education which calls attention
to the injustices embedded in current access to higher education. In calling for
greater equality of access, the White Paper makes the assumption that higher
education is desirable at least for 50 per cent of the countrys young people. This
reflects policies which, out of a concern for social inclusion and economic
development, seek to extend access to higher education. Watts and Bridges draw
upon their recent study of the aspirations and achievements of young people who
have chosen not to enter higher education to address the relationship between
capability and higher education. They contest the widespread view that low
aspirations and low achievements prevent young people from entering higher
education. They discuss why some young people choose to exercise their capability
not to enter higher education. Past injustices and the deficiencies of present policy
are examined and illustrated through one of the life histories generated by the
research. In order to consider the freedoms young people have to achieve the
different lifestyles they aspire to (the real opportunities they have regarding
educational participation) the authors posit three typologies: those who are
initiated into, aspire to, or are outside higher education. Each of these is analysed in
terms of capabilities. Although the drive for wider access to higher education is to
be applauded, they conclude, the failure to address the real opportunities people
have to enjoy the educational lives they want to lead (including the opportunities to
quit education free from the accusation of having low aspirations and achievements)
suggests that this may be an enterprise that is doomed simply to establish other
educational injustices.
Another concrete case of structural injustice is analysed by Vincent Rougeau,
who examines the particular injustices that poor, mainly black, people are suffering
in the United States and the extent to which current American welfare policies are
contributing to maintaining, if not deepening, these injustices. American welfare
policies, and indeed American culture, are characterised by an entrenched
commitment to individual freedom and autonomy. Within the American
conservative mind-set, poverty is seen as a failure of personal virtue, as a state
deserved by those who lack sufficient will and ambition to work, gain an income,
and climb the social ladder. The author shows that where personal autonomy is
13
valued more than community integration, American law and public policies are
poorly equipped to tackle poverty. Current American welfare policies of assistance
to the poor (such as the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity
Reconciliation Act of 1996 which gave rise to the welfare-for-work policies) are
based upon these liberal values of personal autonomy and deserved poverty, making
a meaningful struggle against poverty even more difficult. Rougeau argues that a
way for policies in the United States to be more conducive to poverty reduction is to
re-discover a notion of the common good. Drawing especially from Ricoeurs ethics,
with its understanding of solidarity (self-esteem and solicitude) and of institutions
necessary for good-living-together, from Sen and Nussbaums capability approach,
and from David Hollenbachs recent work on the common good (i.e., the good of
being a community), Rougeau reassesses American welfare reforms. He particularly
examines ways in which reforms could better integrate the poor into American
society, ways in which they could enkindle a sense of communal responsibility in
American culture as an alternative to the value of personal autonomy, and ways in
which they could build the structural foundations for adequate incomes and social
support for the American poor.
Julie Clague applies Sens capability approach to the world of commercial
investment in biotechnology, supplementing it with the language of the common
good which is fundamental to Catholic social teaching. She first shows the
enormous importance of biotechnology for the future health (and so the future
capabilities) of people throughout the world and the concentration of dedicated
biotechnology firms in America, Europe and Japan. Clague then discusses the
processes of patenting which protect the returns upon the huge capital investment
required for research and development in this field. This protection of intellectual
property operates massively to the disadvantage of poorer nations and may also
hinder future research. New trade agreements in the 1990s, especially the Traderelated Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) Agreement signed in 1994
tightened international intellectual property rules, raising further concerns about the
disadvantaging of poorer nations in access to the benefits of biotechnology. These
questions have become yet more acute with the spread of the HIV/AIDS pandemic
amongst poorer countries and the need for cheap anti-retroviral drugs. The World
Bank, the World Health Organisation, the United Nations Development Programme
and the European Commission have all expressed concern about the long-term effect
of TRIPs on the availability of health care in the less developed countries. In the last
part of her essay, Clague focuses on the justice issues raised by biotech patenting,
arguing the need for structures, institutions and political systems which have a
concern for justice and the common good at their heart. She develops the idea of
benefit-sharing, showing why the benefits of genetic research should be seen as a
common good and shared accordingly.
CONCLUSION: A WAY FORWARD?
The origins of this volume lie in a close and appreciative study of the capability
approach of Amartya Sen, which has been found fruitful not only for development
14
economists, but for social and political critics of developed societies. The work of
the Von Hgel Institute is to look for ways of transforming poverty and injustice,
whether in the developed or in the developing world. Its foundation is Roman
Catholic hence a concern in its work for the engagement of Catholic social
teaching with contemporary political and social critique. The work of Amartya Sen,
which espouses no explicit religious or metaphysical basis, has nevertheless proved
particularly congenial in this regard because of its open concern with human
flourishing (human capability), and its thoroughgoing commitment to human
freedom.
Nevertheless, the work of Sen needs careful probing. He writes much more about
freedom and freedoms than about justice: within the Christian tradition freedom and
justice must be held in close relation to one another, for both find their metaphysical
foundation in the being and activity of God. Sen offers us a peculiarly rich construal
of freedom, because of his commitment to the freedom of the individual to identify
and pursue the goals that he or she chooses and values. Nussbaum, who has also
developed her own version of the capability approach, is no less committed to
freedom as intrinsic to her anthropology, but is prepared to be much more
prescriptive about the kinds of goals that human beings will choose and value, and
should be enabled to pursue. In being more prescriptive (in identifying and listing
central human capabilities) she opens the way to the social affirmation and the
social prescription of such goals she reconnects the capability approach with
the subsidiary function of social institutions such as those of health, education, the
media and the law.
Nussbaum, by being more prescriptive in her anthropology than Sen, may be
said to suggest a more clearly defined subsidiary social agenda, and in this to draw
closer to Catholic social teaching. Nevertheless, the flourishing of the individual, the
fullest possible realisation of the capabilities that the individual chooses to develop,
remains for her the social goal that can best be espoused by a plural society with a
liberal agenda for justice. There are, however, complementary questions to be
explored which are raised by those for whom the social agenda is more clearly
defined. For them, human action is embedded within the life of a particular society
as it persists through time. It is supported and developed by the societys history, its
narratives, its traditions and rituals (an area where Catholic social teaching has in its
critique a great deal to offer). Human action is sustained by the deployment of
power in its favour, whether illegitimately, as in totalitarian regimes, or legitimately
in what Rawls calls deliberative democracies. In the study of this power,
particularly as it is deployed institutionally and in the service of justice (or
otherwise), thinkers like Ricoeur, Arendt and Rawls have a great deal to offer and
are partners in dialogue with the capability approach.
It is the conviction of the editors that the capability approach, particularly as
developed by Sen, is robust enough to sustain still further searching enquiry. It is
also the conviction of the editors that within this volume there lie important pointers
to ways in which Sens approach needs to be complemented if it is to be still more
effectively deployed in the service of human flourishing. The debate is far from
concluded.
15
NOTES
1
That social order emerges from utility and profit maximisation has been mathematically proved by
Arrow-Debreus general equilibrium theorem in 1958.
2
The critique of commodification of air, or water, or land, or labour is an important factor at this
point, for that which can be commodified can be traded within the unjust systems of international
exchange. Environmentalists such as George Monbiot (cf. Monbiot, 2003) make this point very
strongly.
3
Nussbaum, 1997; Sen, 1987.
4
Hence, the famous Pareto optimality criteria which have long served as normative guidelines for
welfare economics.
5
See for example Sen, 1992, 1993, 1999.
6
Sen, 1993: 30.
7
Nussbaum, 2000: 76-80.
8
Nussbaum, 1990.
9
Adam Smith, often considered to be the first economist, held the Chair of Moral Philosophy at the
University of Glasgow, see Sen, 1987.
10
Cf. Wilfrid Owens poem Dulce et decorum est (It is good and honourable), which concludes by
speaking of The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori. See E. Blunden, ed. The Poems of
Wilfred Owen. London: Chatto and Windus, 1931, 66.
11
Sen, 1999: chapter 2.
12
Sen, 2002: 83.
13
Sen, 1992: 151.
14
Ibid.: 40. Italics are ours.
15
Ricoeur, 1992: 172.
16
Arendt, 1958: 198.
17
Ibid.: 184.
18
Ricoeur, 1966: xxix.
19
For a summary of Arendts thought, see for example Passerin dEntrves, 1994.
20
Ricoeur, 2000, 2004.
21
Arendt, 1961: 153.
22
Arendt, 1973: 113.
23
Power usually does not achieve something, but rather creates a peculiar configuration of
community life. Institutions work out a social situation by organising and imposing a pattern of
behaviour in order to achieve a common goal. Ricoeur, 1990: 230.
24
Arendt, 1961: 173-196.
25
Arendt, 1958: 79-135.
26
Ibid.
27
Arendt, 1961: 153-154, 162-165.
28
McFadyen, 2000: 80-104.
29
Gustavo Gutierrez notes that from the beginning liberation theologians distinguished between (1)
political and social liberation, which points to the immediate causes of poverty and injustice,
especially with regard to socio-economic structures, (2) human liberation, meaning that, although
aware that changing social structures is important we need to go deeper, and (3) liberation from
selfishness and sin. It was because the liberation theologians focused on the problem of povertyy that
they were confronted with the endemic injustice of social structures which impoverished structures
from which the poor needed to find the strength to liberate themselves, as no one else was going to do it
for them. See Gutierrez, 1999: 26.
30
Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, 1987, 36.2. Italics are ours.
31
Nebel, 2002.
32
One has to note that in Catholic social teaching, the wrongdoing (corruption) is objectively wrong, but
the intention of the person doing the wrong (feeding his family) is not wrong.
33
For popular critique, see Stiglitz, 2004; Monbiot, 2003.
34
See http://www.hd-ca.org.
16
REFERENCES
Arendt, Hannah (1958), The Human Condition, Chicago: Chicago University Press
________ (1961), Between Past and Future: Six Exercises in Political Thought, London: Faber
and Faber
________ (1973), Crises of the Republic, Harmondsworth: Penguin
Gutierrez, Gustavo (1999), The Task and Content of Liberation Theology, in C. Rowland, ed.,
Cambridge Companion to Liberation Theology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
McFadyen, A. (2000), Bound to Sin, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Monbiot, G. (2003), The Age of Consent, London: Flamimgo
Nebel, Mathias (2002), Injustice and Institutions: A Reflection on Sin and Social Structures,
Mimeograph. Paper presented at the Von Hgel Institute, St Edmunds College, Cambridge, June.
Nussbaum, Martha (1990), Aristotelian Social Democracy, in B. Douglass et al., eds, Liberalism and
the Good, London: Routledge
________ (1997), Flawed Foundations: The Philosophical Critique of a (Particular) Type of
Economics, University of Chicago Law Review 64: 1197-1214
________ (2000), Women and Human Development: A Study in Human Capabilities, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press
Passerin dEntrves, Maurizio (1994), The Political Philosophy of Hannah Arendt, London: Routledge
Ricoeur, Paul (1966), Freedom and Nature: The Voluntary and the Involuntary, Trans. E. V. Kohk
Northwestern University Press
________ (1990), Soi-Mme comme un Autre, Paris: Seuil
________ (1992), Oneself as Another, Trans. Kathleen Blamey. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
________ (2000), La Mmoire, lHistoire et lOubli, Paris: Seuil
________(2004), Memory, History and Forgetting, Trans. Kathleen Blamey and D. Pellauer, Chicago:
University of Chicago Press
Sen, Amartya (1987), On Ethics and Economics, Oxford: Basil Blackwell
________ (1992), Inequality Re-examined,
d Oxford: Clarendon Press
________ (1993), Capability and Well-Being, in M. Nussbaum and A. Sen, eds, Quality of Life,
Oxford: Clarendon Press
________(1999), Development as Freedom, Oxford: Oxford University Press
________(2002), Freedom and Rational Choice, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
Stiglitz, Joseph (2004), Globalisation and its Discontents, London: Penguin
CHAPTER 1
PAUL RICOEUR
CAPABILITIES AND RIGHTS
INTRODUCTION
My purpose in this chapter is to bridge the logical gap which separates the two basic
concepts that our title puts side by side. The term capability belongs to philosophical
anthropology; that of rights to the philosophy of law.
My suggestion is to subordinate these two heterogeneous notions to an
encompassing notion of which they would be partial components. The best
candidate for this integration enterprise is, to my mind, that of recognition,
understood as a dynamic process connecting a plurality of points of view as the
distinctive steps of the same development. In a study that I am now devoting to the
process of recognition, I start with the preliminary logical use of the term at stake,
namely recognition, which I take to be identification of any item as being itself and
not anything else. This first step in the process of recognition will not be superseded
by the following ones: questions of identification will remain implied in the
assignment of capabilities and rights at another stage. From this first logical step of
the process I move to its use in a more existential context, that of the recognition of
persons. The notion of capabilities belongs to a distinctive province of the
recognition of persons, that of self-recognition, as I shall try to show. As to the
concept of rights, it refers to a further step, that of mutual recognition, according to
its juridical connotation.
The first part of this study will be devoted to capabilities as the basic topic of
self-recognition. The second part, to rights involved in mutual recognition.
CAPABILITIES AND SELF-RECOGNITION
Taken in its broader sense, the word capabilities belongs to the lexicon of human
action. It designates the kind of power that we claim to be able to exercise. In its
turn this claim expresses the kind of recognition pertaining to the assertion of
selfhood at the reflexive level. This kind of self-recognition may be already detected
in the most ancient literary documents of our western culture. In his book Shame
and Necessity, Bernard Williams speaks in the most natural way of the recognition
of responsibilityy which he detects in the behaviour of Homeric and tragic heroes, to
17
S. Deneulin et al. (eds
( .), Transforming Unjust Structures: The Capability Approach, 17-26.
18
PAUL RICOEUR
the extent that they keep asking themselves what they intend to do. They practise
deliberation, in a sense of the term that Aristotle will later elaborate systematically:
the heroes keep comparing, weighing, preferring one party to another, then choosing
a course of action and facing the consequences.1 The recognition of responsibility
implies such questions as: Who did what? and answers of the form: I, so and so,
did it! To follow Bernard Williams a little further, the Greek heroes may be held to
be centres of decision, whatever interpretation may be given of their motivation.
This basic example related to a past culture allows us to propose a minimal
definition of capability as the power to cause something to happen; it is this power
that is liable to self-recognition.
Starting from these introductory remarks, I consider as a philosophical task the
exploration of the main structures of what is held to be human capability. From an
epistemological point of view, I want to underline the semantic proximity between
self-recognition and attestation as concerns the kind of certitude and confidence
attached to assertions introduced by the modal verb I can. I believe that I can
would be the basic assertion concerning capabilities; the term belief used within
this framework of attestation or self-recognition is distinct from its use in a
theoretical context where it amounts to a weak form of theoretical thinking, of
knowledge.
This confidence (attached to assertions introduced by the modal force of the
expression I can) has not doubt as its contrary but suspicion, which can be refuted
only by some reassurance of the same epistemic nature as the contested certitude. A
whole phenomenology of certitude in its theoretical and practical use is required
here. To the same phenomenological investigation belongs the reference of each
assertion of capability to roles played by other people, such as helping, preventing,
forbidding, or co-operating with the agent. This link between self-assertion and
otherness or alterity will come to the forefront when we consider the connecting
links within the anthropology of capabilities and the juridical sphere of rights.
What I intend to do after these formal remarks is to describe a series of basic
capabilities in a hierarchical order culminating in a specific capability: that which
provides the transition from factual to normative capabilities and, accordingly, the
transition from capabilities at large to rights at large.
The first basic capability is the capacity to speak: I can speak. The priority given
to this capability may be vindicated from several points of view: the Homeric and
tragic heroes keep speaking about their deeds; their verbal exchange is the substance
of the epic or tragic poem. They designate themselves as the cause or the
principle of their action. The contemporary pragmatics of discourse confirms this
view: according to the famous motto of Austins philosophy of ordinary discourse,
to speak is to do things with words. In this way, action and speech go hand in
hand, to the extent that speaking is itself a kind of action. The analysis of the
performative component of any statement, including factual assertions, provides
the expected precision; the speaking subject is able to designate himself/herself by
the use of specific linguistic devices, among them personal pronouns, possessive
adjectives, proper names, etc. For the sake of our enquiry, I want to underline the
tight connection between self-designation and interlocution; the simplest verbal
19
expression requires an ear to receive it; the structure question-answer is paradigmatic as regards the correlation between elocution and interlocution. Even
constative assertions are in need of confirmation and approval on the part of the
other. We may already anticipate the claim to be heard as a right to speak.
From the capability to speak, we move to the capacity to act, in the specific
meaning of being able to make events happen. The subject may recognise himself or
herself as the cause, giving the form of a claim to the assertion: I did it; I am the
one who did it. For modern thought this claim has lost all innocence. We cannot help
evoking the Kantian antinomy opposing, at the cosmological level, the causal
connection to the assignment of free spontaneity to moral agents. We shall later
return to the basic concept of imputation, or liability, as the capacity bridging the
gap between descriptive and prescriptive notions. At the present stage of our
presentation it is enough to lay the stress on our capacity to generate changes at the
physical, interpersonal and social level. This capacity makes us into agents in the
strong sense, agents capable of answering questions related to the who structure of
action, as distinct from questions inquiring into the what side of events as merely
occurring. To underline the distinction between whatt and who, some philosophers
borrow from the sphere of law and jurisprudence the concept of ascription, filling
the gap between description and prescription. In the same way as we ascribe rights
to individuals, we ascribe to them the capacity to designate themselves as the true
authors of their deeds. Such ascription of action to an agent is part of the meaning of
action as a capacity. It characterises as agency this tight link between action and
agent. We may then say that the action belongs to the agent who appropriates it and
calls it his own.
I now want to put in the third place the capacity to tell, to tell stories about
events and characters, including oneself. To a large extent, what we call personal
identity is linked to this capacity and may be characterised as narrative identity. In
this regard the branch of semiotics devoted to narrative structures under the label of
narratology may be put in line with the categories forged by Aristotle in the Poetics,
the categories of muthos, translated as plot, and of mimesis, i.e. imitation or
representation of action. In this way, the characters themselves may be said to be
emplotted and the notion of character becomes a narrative category. This connection
between plot and character may be held to be the conceptual matrix of our modern
notion of narrative identity. The adoption of this category has several implications
which play a decisive role in discussions bearing on capabilities and rights. First of
all, it provides a temporal dimension to the very notion of identity. Second,
concerning the relation of the told action and its agent, it allows us to distinguish
between the two kinds of identity. In Oneself as Anotherr I propose the distinction
between idem and ipse, between sameness and selfhood.2 It would be wrong to
assign only ipse identity to persons. Narrative identity relies rather on the ongoing
dialectic between idem and ipse identity, between sameness and selfhood. As we
shall show later, it is this dialectical constitution of personal identity which claims
recognition at the level of juridical, social and political relationships. MacIntyre has
given to the notion of narrative identity its full scope by proposing the notion of the
20
PAUL RICOEUR
narrative unity of a life.3 According to him this concept is able to support Aristotles
concept of good life. In fact, how could a subject of action assign an ethical
qualification to his or her personal life if he or she were not able to gather this life in
the terms of a narrative identity? One more remark concerning the capability to tell:
thanks to narrative identity, the capability to tell provides a structure to personal and
collective memory. This implication is particularly relevant to our further
discussion. If we take into account the encounter between competitive memories
related to the same traumatic events, we are confronted with a situation of conflict
preventing any attempt to reconcile antagonistic groups of any kind. Collective
memories are threatened with being swallowed by what Freud called the impulse to
repeat instead of remembering. Psychoanalysis assigns to hidden resistances this
pathology of memory which has its cultural and political expression in the claim of
traditional accounts of past sufferings to shape collective memory in terms of war
between narrative identities. Such misuse of our capability to tell should not be
ignored when we come to the topic of capabilities and rights. Narrative identities
may claim recognition according to their differences but this claim calls for a kind of
therapy as regards the so-called impulse to repeat and to hate foreign traditions built
on narrative identities held as adversary.
The frightening fragility of narrative identity brings us to our last cycle of
considerations concerning personal capabilities. The successive questions - who
speaks to whom? Who acts with or against other agents? Who tells stories about
himself or herself and about strangers held to be friends or enemies? - find a kind of
culmination in the question: who is capable of imputation? (in German we speak of
Zurechnungsfhigkeit). Liability could be held to be an appropriate equivalent
as could accountability, which maintains a link with the concept of account,
compte, Rechnung. Such account makes the subject accountable before
somebody else. What does this new idea add to that of ascription evoked earlier? It
adds the ability to bear the consequences of ones own acts, particularly those which
are held to be harms inflicted on somebody else as the victim. Among the implied
consequences comes the compensation due for the harm done, but also the ability to
suffer the pain of punishment. A threshold has been crossed: that of the subject of
right. How does that transition occur?
A new modality of self-designation gets attached to capabilities opened to
objective description. As concerns the action as such, some ethico-moral predicates,
linked either to the idea of the Good or to that of obligation, follow the formulation
of verbs of action. These predicates characterise the action in question as good or
wrong, as allowed or forbidden. When applied reflexively to the agents themselves,
these agents are held to be capable of moral imputation. With imputability
or accountability, the concept of capability reaches its peak in terms of selfdesignation.
21
CAPABILITIES AND MUTUAL RECOGNITION

As I have just said, a threshold has been crossed, but a long way has still to be
covered, leading from the notion of imputability as a capability, to that of rights,
implying the framework of institutions ruling the sphere of legality. The
accountability of moral agents provides only the anthropological ground for the
characterisation of human actions in terms of validity, of Gltigkeit, as Habermas
would say. How to bridge the logical gap implied by the title of this chapter:
Capabilities and rights? Anticipating the present argument, I have already
underlined the difference between the anthropological concept of capabilities and
the juridical context of rights. But, at the same time, I did propose as a connecting
link the concept of recognition, as a dynamic process making its way through
several stages. In the above section, we went across the logical step of identifying
something in general as being itself and not something else, and we moved to the
step of self-recognition, to which we assigned the ascription of capabilities to a
human being accountable for his/her actions. I propose to move one step further, to
the stage of mutual recognition as it is used in ordinary language, as when we speak
of recognising, acknowledging an authority as legitimate, or a debt, or a crime, a
benefit, a service or a gift. The question then is to proceed from self-recognition to
mutual recognition. It is not enough to take advantage of the reference to the other as
implied by each modality of the I can, be it I can speak, I can do, I can tell,
I can hold myself as accountable. The idea of reciprocity was included in this
consideration of alterity connected to the self-assertion of the subject of capabilities.
Our basic hypothesis concerning the breadth of the process of recognition needs
the addition of a complementary hypothesis in order to allow the transition from
self-recognition to mutual recognition.
This complementary hypothesis relies on the reversal in the very use of the verb,
a reversal from the active to the passive voice: to recognise. Used in the active voice,
to recognise implies a claim, that of intellectual mastery over the field of meanings
at stake in the conceptual situation. Regarding self-recognition, we did notice the
assurance, the confidence which goes with the assertion of any capability. I strongly
believe that I can. The reversal, which finds its grammatical support in the use of the
verb in the passive voice, may be summarised in the following way: from the claim
to recognise to the need to be recognised.
This notion of need to be recognised will be henceforth our guiding thread. This
need requires the mediation of institutions providing stability and durability to the
process, fulfilling step by step the need to be recognised. At the same time the
category of alterity or otherness assumes the form of reciprocity or mutuality which
was lacking (or remained implicit) at the previous stage of self-recognition in terms
of capabilities.
I do not want to hide my discovery of decisive support, at this stage of my
inquiry, in the concept of Anerkennungg received from Hegel. It appears for the first
time in the philosophical fragments belonging to the Iena period of the years 18021806, just before the publication of the famous Phenomenology of Spirit.4 These
Hegelian works generated a rich heritage in the field of political philosophy
especially among some followers of Habermas, such as Axel Honneth, the author of
22
PAUL RICOEUR
a book entitled Struggle for Recognition,5 which helped me to ground the link
between capabilities and rights on the concept of Anerkennungg as the leading
category in the field of mutual or reciprocal recognition. By characterising
Anerkennung
g as a struggle, Honneth prepares us to take into account the conflicting
aspect of the dynamic process at stake and the role of a negative feeling such as
contempt, which may be transcribed as a denial of recognition.
The main advantage of an enquiry guided by the concept of Anerkennungg is to
open the path for social theories grounded on normative motivation as a reply to any
naturalistic anthropology such as that of Hobbes in the Leviathan. Hobbess theory of
the state of nature may be held as the paradigm of all following social or political
theory excluding moral motives from the constitution of the social bond: only the
passions of rivalry, defiance and glory are held as originary. They contain the war of
everyone against everyone and the fear of violent death which leaves no other way
out than the dispossession of each private claim to power in favour of the Leviathan,
as both a machine and a mortal god. Anerkennungg as grounded on normative
motivation allows us to see conflicting interactions constitutive of the process of
Anerkennung
g as the main key to the resulting enlargement and fulfilment of the
individual capabilities described in the first part of this chapter.
In this way, mutual recognition brings self-recognition to fruition. At this stage,
my analysis in terms of recognition confirms the attempt of several contemporary
enterprises aiming at a normative account of social relationships and using the
concept of capability as the corner stone of their theory. This is possible only if the
notion of capability itself is held as the expression of some normative motivation not
confined to empirical description. The difficulty lies in the treatment of capability as
implying some sort of need to be recognised and thus developing a right to
accomplishment, fulfilment or flourishing. Then, the logical gap that I noticed at the
beginning between the descriptive status of capability and the normative status of
right would be bridged. But what allows us to deal with capability as the basic
component of a normative social theory? To my mind, the concept of mutual
recognition may assume this function to the extent that it leads from an initial stage
of need to a terminal stage of fulfilment requiring the mediation of juridical
institutions under the tutelage of the idea of right. Before considering some
contemporary attempts to co-ordinate capabilities and rights, in a way compatible
with Amartya Sens normative economy, I shall focus my attention on some traits of
the post Hegelian Anerkennung-recognition which enables such new application.
The first character common to a large spectrum of contemporary actualisation of
the theory of recognition is to assume the quasi-axiomatic postulation of the concept
of liberty received from Kant and channelled by Fichte, who was first among the
German idealists to link the concept of freedom to that of inter-subjectivity, as the
condition not only of its implementation but also of its constitutive structure. This
basic presupposition finds in the last work of Hegel devoted to the subject namely
the Principles of the Philosophy of Rightt its most elaborate expression: the
philosophical concept of right covers the whole range of institutions devoted to the
historical actualisation of freedom. The realm of right can be equated with the
institutions of freedom.
23
The second common character is the role assigned to negativity in this process of
actualisation; or, to put it in other words, the role of conflictuality as the spring of
the dynamism of recognition. The readers of the Hegelian philosophical fragments
belonging to the period of Iena keep in mind the famous fragment on crime (crimen)
devoted to the rebellious behaviour of the individual denied the recognition of his
singularity by the law at the stage of abstract right which proceeds from the
practice of contractual relations in the exchange of goods. The same conflictual
situation may be seen at work in the successive levels of institutions implying a
personal participation and governed by rules embodying the historical heritage of
shared values, such as those of family, of social interacting, and culminating in the
State characterised by its constitutional structures. Altogether, these institutions of
freedom constitute the realm of Sittlichkeit, in the sense of concrete morality (some
translators have chosen the term ethicity to preserve the intent of the German
Sittlichkeit, itself derived from the term Sitten, which means customs, manners,
mores, in a word, collective praxis.
Axel Honneth, one of the successors of Jrgen Habermas, proposes a
reactualisation of the Hegelian argument in which he takes into account the
empirical contribution of contemporary thinkers such as Herbert Mead. From this
coupling of speculation and empirical analysis, he derives three paradigms of
recognition, each of which implies specific forms of creative conflictuality. At a
prejuridical stage, he considers the affective modalities of recognition and
conflictuality, where it is already possible to apply the famous Hegelian formulation:
to be oneself in a stranger. For the sake of our discussion I will not stay at this
stage for long; nevertheless, it is worth observing in early childhood already the first
conflicting structures pertaining to the emotional relations between mother and child
and aiming at overcoming the stage of dependency linked to fusional attachment.
Even in adulthood, love and friendship are confronted by the trial of separation, the
benefit of which lies in the ability to be alone, and consequently to rely on ones
own capabilities. Now, this capacity grows in proportion to the trust of partners in
the permanence of the invisible bond that underlines the intermittent presence and
absence. Specific negative experiences and feelings are related to this first range of
mutual exchange. If we may speak of contempt as the negative feeling
corresponding to the harm done to individuals at each stage of the process of
recognition, humiliation would be the specific form of contempt proper to the
prejuridical stage; we could define humiliation as the denial of recognition at that
stage, its contrary being approbation. Humiliation, felt as the denial of approbation,
harms each partner at the prejuridical level of his or her being-with others.
MUTUAL RECOGNITION AND RIGHTS
We come closer to a field of reciprocal relations, where capabilities and rights
could be connected, when we move to the juridical level of the fight for recognition.
Hegel did not pay much attention to the field of commercial exchange and to the
passions linked to the competitivity between partners at the economic level,
although he was well aware of the preference given to the value of utility in that
24
PAUL RICOEUR
field. He laid the main stress on the claim to universality linked to the conquest of
new rights at the level of juridical relationship at large: the juridical person is
defined as the bearer of rights implying normative obligations as regards the other
partner in this kind of relationship. Recognition at that level amounts to the
identification of each person as free and equal to any other in terms of rights;
recognition in the juridical sense adds to the basic capabilities considered in our first
part under the aegis of self-recognition the new capabilities proceeding from the
conjunction between the universal validity of the norm and the singularity of the
persons. The enlargement of the sphere of rights ascribed to persons goes hand in
hand with the increase of the sphere of capabilities that the juridical subjects
recognise in one another. Such conjunction between new rights and new capabilities
proceeds from the struggle which gives a historical dimension to both processes. At
the same time the concept of respect elaborated by Kant needs to take account of the
history of rights which provides each time an appropriate new content for this
unhistorical moral concept of respect. The struggle for recognition related to this
purely juridical sphere requires an equal attention to the normative constraints and
the concrete situations within which persons exercise their abilities.
As to the enlargement of the normative sphere of rights, it may be taken from
two different points of view, that of the enumeration of new subjective rights and
that of the ascription of these rights to new categories of individuals or of groups.
With respect to the first perspective, we should distinguish between civil rights,
political rights and social rights. The first category includes the negative rights
which protect the person as concerns her life, her freedom of movement, her
property against the encroachments of the State. The second concerns the positive
rights related to participation in activities linked to the formation of the public will.
The third one concerns the rights to receive a fair share in the distribution of basic
goods. This last category concerns directly one theme of discussion: citizens of all
countries suffer from the striking contrast between the equal ascription of rights and
the unequal distribution of primary goods.
This contrast finds its subjective counterpart in the quest for new capabilities at
the personal level, to which correspond new forms of denial of recognition, of
contempt. The exclusion from access to elementary goods is particularly felt as a
humiliation generating indignation, anger and violence. Here too, a negative
motivation is a powerful factor in social change, under the condition of a parallel
increase of self-respect and of the will to play a role in the enlargement of the sphere
of subjective rights. In this regard, the problem is not only the emergence of new
rights but the extension of their sphere of application. As Joel Feinberg says in
Rights, Justice and the Bounds of Liberty: What we call human dignity is nothing
else than the recognised capacity to require a right. 6 To this capability of higher
order recognition corresponds the positive feeling of pride.
If we now move beyond the juridical stage of mutual recognition, we encounter
new normative requirements which have more to do with social esteem than with
equality in terms of rights. New forms of conflictual situations are at stake and new
capabilities come to light in connection with the new normative requirements.
Axiological components are implied here in terms of shared values. But other
important factors interfere with the diversity of the social mediations involved. To
25
this variety of social mediations corresponds a variety of social roles which call for
distinct kinds of social esteem. I propose here, as a model for the establishing of a
typology of social esteem, the work of the French scholars Boltansky and Thvenot
devoted to what they call conomies de la grandeur.7 The idea is that individuals
may be held to be great or small according to the evaluations ruling specific
categories of social activities. You may be great as a musician; somebody else as
the head of an industrial company. These two authors have tried, in a way
comparable to Michael Walzers Spheres of Justice,8 to reduce to a limited number
of worlds or cities the variety of evaluations governing such an economy of
greatness, domestic, artistic, industrial or other. What concerns us in this regard is
the competitive behaviour thanks to which individual agents fight for recognition in
one or another of these cities. Our authors call justification these strategies to get
recognition for the rank that they occupy in the order of greatness at stake in their
case. This competition constitutes a new component in the fight for recognition
which is one of the leading concepts in my study. We have here to do more often
with arguments than with physical violence. People argue for their place and their
role. At the same time, new negative feelings come to the foreground concerning
specific forms of injustice linked to the tests to be passed so as to satisfy the
expectations of those in charge of the evaluation of performances of a certain type.
Some other kinds of dispute appear in connection with the plurality of the systems of
evaluations governing that of the worlds composing the conomies de la
grandeur. What is at stake here are the criteria of greatness in use in a given
segment of the social structure. A typology of critiques addressed from one city to
another may be established. These enable individual agents to develop a new
capability: that of judging the system of values prevailing in the limited world where
a place is assigned to him or her. A new dimension of the person is revealed in that
way, in connection with the capability to understand another world than his/her own.
This capability may be compared to that of learning a foreign language and of
translating a message from one language into another.
Some other forms of struggles for recognition could be evoked besides these
specifically social ones. They have to do with social and political forms of
discrimination concerning cultural minorities of different kinds. The discussions
which have to do with multiculturalism are well-known. Charles Taylor has devoted
to this dispute confronting difference and democracy an interesting volume
which he himself puts under the title of politics of recognition.9 What needs
recognition is the collective identity of the minorities at stake. A politics of
recognition is at the same time a politics of difference. Whatever name is given
to the aims of these kinds of struggles for recognition, the expected benefit can be
nothing other than an increase of self-esteem tightly linked to that of social esteem.
Such are some of the ways of connecting capabilities and rights under the
guidance of the concept of recognition followed from the stage of self-recognition to
that of mutual recognition.
The late Paul Ricoeur was the John Nuveen Professor Emeritus in the Divinity
School, the Department of Philosophy, and the Committee on Social Thought at the
University of Chicago.
26
PAUL RICOEUR
NOTES
1
Williams, 1993.
Ricoeur, 1992.
3
McIntyre, 1981: chapter 15; Ricoeur, 1992: chapters 5-7.
4
Hegel, 1986.
5
Honneth, 1996.
6
Feinberg, 1980.
7
Boltansky and Thvenot, 1991.
8
Walzer, 1983.
9
Taylor, 1992.
2
REFERENCES
Boltansky, L. and L.Thvenot (1991), De la Justification: Les Economies de la Grandeur, Paris:
Gallimard
Feinberg, J. (1980), Rights, Justice, and the Bounds of Liberty: Essays in Social Philosophy,
Princeton. N.J. Princeton University Press
Hegel, G.W.F. (1986), The Jena System, 1804-5: Logic and Metaphysics, Kingston: McGill-Queens
University Press
Honneth, Axel (1996), The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts,
Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press
McIntyre, A. (1981), After Virtue. A Study in Moral Theory, London: Duckworth
Ricoeur, Paul (1992), Oneself as Another, Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Taylor, Charles (1992), Multiculturalism and The Politics of Recognition, Princeton: Princeton
University Press
Walzer, Michael (1983), Spheres of Justice: A Defence of Pluralism and Equality, New York: Basic
Books
Williams, Bernard (1993), Shame and Necessity, Berkeley: University of California Press
CHAPTER 2
SVERINE DENEULIN
NECESSARY THICKENING
Ricoeurs Ethic of Justice as a Complement to Sens Capability Approach
INTRODUCTION
Amartya Sens capability approach initially emerged as a powerful critique of the
utilitarian approach used in economic analysis for well-being evaluation, and offers
a credible alternative framework. Although its success in shifting the works and
analysis of economists is still limited, the capability approach has achieved
widespread success in shifting the theoretical basis of the contemporary agenda of
development theory.
Sens approach to development can be defined in terms of one single word,
freedom: Development consists of the removal of various types of unfreedoms that
leave people with little choice and little opportunity of exercising their reasoned
agency. The removal of substantial unfreedoms is constitutive of development.1
Sens theory of development can be seen as being built around three cornerstones.
First, it is concerned with the expansion of substantive human freedoms [such
as the freedom to be healthy, to read and write, to take part in the life of the
community].2 Second, it holds individual agency [as] ultimately central to
addressing these deprivations [in substantive human freedoms].3 And third, it
cannot be dissociated from participation.4 But is Sens capability approach to
development sufficiently equipped to offer theoretical guidelines for fulfilling its
self-assigned task: removing the substantial unfreedoms which leave so many people
with little choice about their lives, and liberating people from unjust structures that
prevent them from living a life of their choice?
The argument that will be put forward here is that, as it stands, Sens conception
of development is too thin to offer sufficient normative guidelines to remove
substantial unfreedoms and to transform unjust structures. It will be argued that
Ricoeurs little ethics, with its definition of ethics as the aim of the good life,
with and for others, in just institutions,5 provides Sens capability approach to
development with the necessary thickening elements that will make his approach a
better guide for removing unfreedoms and transforming unjust structures. The
argument will be structured around the three cornerstones of Sens development
theory: freedom consequentialism to identify the ends of transformative action,
27
28
SVERINE DENEULIN
individuals as its subjects and freedom proceduralism as its means. But before
entering the arguments, two major concerns need to be addressed here.
A first concern is that Sens capability approach limits itself to finding an

alternative evaluative space to utility for assessing human well-being: that of the
capability space. Sen strongly emphasises that the capability approach to
development is not a full theory of justice and should by no means be seen as a
theory designed to specify ways according to which societies should be arranged.
The capability approach, as framed by Sen, does not pretend to be a theory designed
to specify ways in which societies should be arranged. Sen emphasizes that the idea
of capability refers to characteristics of individual advantages but that it fall[s]
short of telling us enough about the fairness of or equity of the processes involved.6
The capability approach limits itself to finding an alternative evaluative space to
utility for assessing human well-being, and is not concerned with the fairness, equity
and efficiency of the processes involved in expanding freedoms. The capability
perspective is thus not a fully-fledged theory of justice. It is primarily a framework
for thought,7 or a proposal, because it does nothing more than to propose that the
evaluation of social arrangements be set in the space of capabilities.8 The capability
approach proposes that any policy should be undertaken with the ultimate purpose of
expanding the capabilities that people have reason to choose and value. It limits
itself to focusing on the informational basis for ethical judgements.
Looking beyond its objective, the capability approach seems however to hide
much more than simply a framework for thought or a framework for assessing human actions according to certain ends. If its self-assigned aim is the
removal of various types of unfreedoms that leave people with little choice and
little opportunity of exercising their reasoned agency, should the internal logic of
the capability approach not require it to offer a more fully-fledged theory of justice?
By limiting itself to specifying a particular space in which actions ought to be
assessed, the capability approach implicitly entails that societies should be arranged
in some ways rather than others, namely in ways that will enable people to enjoy the
capabilities they have reason to choose and value. By its very nature, as an approach
which offers new ways of looking at poverty (namely that poverty consists of a lack
of a set of certain capabilities or freedoms), the capability approach is more than a
proposal, it is a call to (ethical) action. It is in part a guiding theory for designing
and undertaking actions towards transforming unjust structures and removing the
substantial unfreedoms that leave people with so little choice.
A second concern is that there can be serious doubts whether a development
theory can ever be a guide for transformative action. There can indeed be serious
doubts as to whether policy decision-makers ever consult normative guidelines that
are available in development theory before making their decisions, or whether Sens
Development as Freedom serves as their key reference book! What then is the use,
one may wonder, of examining the adequacy of Sens development theory as a guide
for transforming unjust structures? Despite such questions, past experience suggests
that development action is not disconnected from development theory. There is a
body of evidence regarding the influence of the underlying ideas in development
29
theories upon actual policy decisions.9 Insofar as ideas contained in development

theories influence the ideological context in which decision-makers are socialised,
and insofar as it is only from the social context in which policy-makers live that they
can draw meanings and values for their actions, ideas that underpin a powerful
development theory do influence policy decisions by acting upon the prevalent
values according to which policy decisions are made. Therefore, since decisions are
made according to the underlying values in a society and since development theories
influence these values, the way Sens capability approach is theoretically framed
is not a purely academic matter, but a matter of direct practical implication.
By stressing individual agency and political freedom as central elements of
development, it conceives development in a certain light, with certain normative
values, and these values have policy implications because of their influence on the
values of the world in which decisions are made.
FREEDOM CONSEQUENTIALISM
Since its emergence, development theory has been concerned with the achievement
of better human lives, but, Sen argues, by focusing on the possession of
commodities, development theory has failed to respect the very nature of human
living and has failed to take into account the fundamental aspects of the life that a
human being succeeds in living. It is precisely within that concern for finding
relevant information about the very nature of the lives that people are actually living
that Sens capability approach has situated itself. It characterises human well-being
in terms of what people are or do (like being healthy, reading or writing, taking part
in the life of the community), which Sen calls functionings. And more specifically,
since he considers freedom one of the most basic aspects of human life, well-being
is to be assessed not so much by what people are or do, but by what they are able to
be or do should they so choose (like being able to be healthy, being able to read and
write, being able to participate in the life of the community), which Sen calls
capabilities.10 A capability is a persons ability to perform valuable acts or reach
valuable states of being. While functionings are distinct aspects of living conditions
or different achievements in living a certain type of life, capabilities are real notions
of freedom and reflect the real opportunities people have to lead or achieve a certain
type of life. Informed by the capability view of well-being, development theory
entails as a consequence that development be judged in terms of the expansion of
substantive human freedoms.
In contrast to the utility theory which conceives well-being as depending on
some state of mind within the agent, the capability approach involves assessing a
persons well-being in terms of a substantive judgement about what makes her life
better. Sen has repeatedly stressed the deficiencies of subjective approaches to wellbeing, especially in their inability to acknowledge that preferences are adaptive.
Deprived and oppressed people often adapt themselves to their situations, and adjust
their preferences to their deprived situations, so that their preferences are a very poor
guide for assessing their well-being. For example, in sexist oppressive societies,
30
SVERINE DENEULIN
women will often tend to place a negative value on education because they have
internalised the belief that women should not receive education. In Sens capability
approach, as in any objective theory of the good, things or states of affairs, like
being able to be healthy or being able to pursue knowledge, will have an intrinsic
value, independently of whether they affect peoples subjective utility. In that sense,
the capability approach differs fundamentally from the utilitarian approach, because
it makes room for a variety of doings and beings as important in themselves (not
just because they may yield utility, nor just to the extentt that they yield utility).11
What matters is not what commodities bring to people in terms of some subjective
states of mind, but what matters is whether these commodities are really successful
in expanding the freedoms people have to do or be what they have reason to value.
Despite being an objective theory of the good which asserts that improving
human well-being is a matter of increasing a certain set of things that are objectively
good, Sen is very reluctant to put forward a comprehensive conception of the good
or to define what exactly constitutes the freedoms people have reason to value. Sen
deliberately avoids identifying the capabilities that are valuable to promote, and
emphasises that the evaluation of capabilities does not have to be based upon a
particular comprehensive conception that orders ways of life.12 The capability
approach to development only specifies an evaluation space, but does not propose a
formula for evaluation. Sen concludes that, there is no escape from the problem of
evaluation in selecting a class of functionings and in the corresponding description
of capabilities.13 He argues that, in dealing with situations of extreme poverty,
choosing the relevant functionings is quite easy, since there is a relatively small
number of centrally important functionings (and the corresponding basic
capabilities, e.g. the ability to be well-nourished and well-sheltered, the capability of
escaping avoidable morbidity and premature mortality), while in other contexts,
the list may have to be much longer and much more diverse.14
By refraining from specifying the content of the various capabilities constitutive
of human well-being, the approach is open to many different specifications of what
it is valuable to promote, as well as open to many different ways of specifying what
is valuable. Given the open-ended and incomplete nature of well-being, it would be
erroneous to give a complete range; this is what Sen calls the fundamental reason
for incompleteness in his approach. And even if it would not be a mistake to find a
complete ordering, we could not identify it in practice; this is what Sen calls the
pragmatic reason for incompleteness. Even though it is impossible to determine
quality of life in an exhaustive and precise way, Sen concludes that it is better to be
vaguely right than precisely wrong.
By refraining from taking a stand upon the valuable capabilities that people have
reason to choose, Sens capability approach is thus a Rawsian political project, and
shares with Rawlss political liberalism the concern for respecting peoples freedom
to choose their own conception of the good. Both Sen and Rawls acknowledge the
fact that people have different ends and that this must be respected. The difference is
that the capability approach puts more emphasis on what primary goods do to
people, since two persons who pursue the same end might need different amounts of
primary goods to achieve the same end.15 But can the capability approach to
31
development retain its Rawlsian liberalism and its concern for respecting peoples
freedom to decide what is valuable for them, when the theory comes to constitute a
normative framework for the transformation of unjust structures?
Let us take for example the case of the Dominican Republic. During the 1990s,
the government took drastic economic measures that led the country to embark on a
path of rapid economic growth. Indeed, in the 1990s, the country experienced the
highest economic growth rate in Latin America. But the country still exhibits the
lowest public spending on health and education in Latin America.16 In that context,
when asked about what were the most important problems that the country should
tackle, people expressed the following priorities: education was regarded as an
urgent policy priority by 4 per cent of the population, after unemployment (12 per
cent), the high criminality rate (14 per cent), the high cost of living (24 per cent) and
electricity shortages (30 per cent).17 So, one could say that the capabilities that
people have reason to choose and value are in the following order: the capability to
have access to electricity, the capability to buy cheap goods, the capability to live in
a secure environment, the capability to have employment, and finally the capability
to be educated.
But if one takes into account illiteracy levels at 14.5 per cent in 2005 (with a
Latin American average at 9.5 per cent), and if one bears in mind that a Dominican
upper class family with 3 children pays US$ 15,000 a year to secure for its children
primary and secondary education and that 30 per cent of the Dominican population
lives under the poverty line of US$ 51 a month, and that a poor family would then
have to work 100 months to secure a year of good education for one single child,
one may seriously question whether the capability to pursue education is not a
capability that Dominicans have reason to choose and value. And if one also pays
attention to the very low health standards (maternal mortality was estimated at 180
per 100,000 live births in 2000, whereas, given that 98 per cent of births are attended
by qualified personnel, the maternal mortality rate should be situated around 40 per
100,000 live births), or if one considers the major air pollution or deforestation
problems,18 one may also seriously question why the capability to be healthy or to
live in a non-polluted environment do not appear as capabilities that Dominicans
have reason to choose and value. As a guide to policy-making, then, the emphasis on
the capabilities that people have reason to choose and value may show similar
deficiencies to those of the revealed preference approach (the ends of policy-making
being the ones that people subjectively prefer).
Despite the fact that the assessment of human well-being has shifted from
preferences to the capabilities that people have reason to choose and value, the same
objections that Sens capability approach has been making against the revealedpreference approach seem also to apply to Sens capability approach itself. Namely,
situating the evaluation space of well-being in terms of the capabilities that people
have reason to choose and value does not make a normative judgement on the
contents of the reasons that people have when choosing and valuing certain
capabilities. In response to the critique that the capability approach fails to include a
32
SVERINE DENEULIN
normative assessment of the reasons why people value certain capabilities, one
could say that the capability approach insists on the role of public debate to
distinguish the reasons that are valuable from those that are not. However, the
reasons that are expressed through the democratic processes might not be conducive
to enhancing human well-being. When democratic processes themselves occur
within unjust structures, such as structures of inequality, the reasons that are
expressed will often be the reasons advanced by the most powerful, as for example
has been the case in the Dominican Republic. If the capability approach is a theory
guiding and assessing development policies according to the capabilities people
have reason to choose and value, given the structures of inequality within which
people express their good reasons to value certain capabilities, it seems that the
approach crucially requires a critical account of the good reasons people may have
to value certain capabilities.
Even though there are many good reasons to leave the capability approach
unspecified, it seems that some content must be given to the relevant capabilities
that public policies should promote. Moreover, given the limitations of processbased approaches in reaching a consensus over the components of human wellbeing, there would have to be some reliance on a particular conception of what is
good for human beings, if particular actions are to be undertaken and assessed on the
basis of the capability approach.
Martha Nussbaum has convincingly argued that, leaving the capability approach
incomplete and leaving to individual freedom the role of defining the sets of beings
and doings that people have reason to choose and value, amounts to leaving the
capability approach with the same deficiency as the preference approach that Sen
has so widely criticised. As the choice of what is valuable and relevant can be the
product of structures of inequalities and discrimination, Nussbaum has gone beyond
the deliberate incompleteness of Sens approach by proposing a set of central human
capabilities that individuals have reason to choose and value in any circumstance.
Moreover, she underlines that the freedoms that Sen so strongly emphasises are not
all valuable (such as the freedom to pollute, or the freedom to finance political
campaigns). This is why she argues that the freedoms or capabilities that people
have reason to choose and value should be given content and be restricted so that
equal freedom for all be respected, and this is why she puts forward a list of central
human capabilities.19
However, although Nussbaums approach goes beyond Sens incompleteness, she
insists that capabilities (i.e., the abilities to achieve central human functionings) and
not functionings should remain the political goal, so that individual freedom be
respected. By focusing on central human capabilities rather than the capabilities
people have reason to choose and value, Nussbaum restricts the domain of choice
but the essence of the conceptualisation of development as freedom remains similar.
Capabilities remain opportunities that individuals have reason to value, should they
choose to seize these opportunities or not. The focus is on the freedom to choose a
particular kind of life, rather than on the actual life itself: We are aiming to make
people able to live and act in certain concrete ways. Such an approach does not
ignore the value of choice, since what we aim at is to make them capable of
Ok. Es un problema para una buena

definicin de las capacidadeslibertades a elegir q haya influencias
de poderosos, pero es igual o ms
peligroso que haya un otro que
defina por su experticia. Lo que se
debiera es trabajar sobre el
procedimiento, permitiendo mas
niveles de reflexin que una encuesta
como en el caso dominicano. Porque
si no se comete el mismo error que
se quiere solucionar. O sea, para que
los poderosos no dominen, entonces
domino yo con mis ideas acadmicas
o filosficas.
33
choosing to act in these ways, not simply to push them into so acting. This means
(1) that we will define our goal in terms of capabilities, not actual functioning; and
(2) that one of the capabilities we must most centrally consider in each area of life is
the capability of choosing.20 Nussbaums capability approach thus remains situated,
like Sens, within a Rawlsian political project, where the telos of society is nothing
more than what each individual chooses to pursue as being worthwhile.
In contrast to Martha Nussbaums emphasis on the good life as freedom, Paul
Ricoeurs ethics stresses that the good life is not a life of choice, but a life which is
constituted by certain intrinsically good components. A preliminary view of what is
intrinsically good in a human life is necessary for action to take place, and more
specifically a preliminary view of which is lacking to a good human life. As Paul
Ricoeur states:
It is from a complaint that we penetrate the domain of the just and unjust. The sense of
injustice is not only more striking, but also more adequate than a sense of justice;
because justice is often what is lacking and injustice what is reigning, and humans have
a clearer vision of what is lacking to human relationships than the right way of
organizing them. It is the injustice that sets thought in motion.21
Actions that remove unfreedoms are provoked in response to the harms that have
been inflicted on human beings through the lack of certain important components of
a good human life. If the capability approach is a development theory aiming at
organizing human life in society with the hope of removing the many unfreedoms
from which people suffer, then it does not seem to be able to avoid being based on
some idea about the goodd in that society. Without such a vision of the excellences
which make up worthwhile human living, little action could be taken towards
removing the unfreedoms that Sen speaks of. In other words, Sens capability
approach to development will have to be thickened by a vision of what is lacking in
human relationships.
Although stressing the need for having such a vision of what is lacking in human
lives, Ricoeur highlights that what should be counted as unjust or lacking in human
lives is always uncertain because people disagree about what should constitute a
good human life:
Considering justice as a virtue is admitting that justice contributes to orienting human
action towards a fulfilment, a perfection. The aim of the good life endows the particular
virtue of justice with a teleological character. Living well is its telos. But the absence of
a consensus about what truly and absolutely constitutes the Good involves that the
meaning attached to the predicate good is tainted by uncertainty.22
Indeed, the absence of a consensus about the predicate good is tainted by

uncertainty, but this does not mean that the freedom to decide about what is lacking
in a human life has the last word in policy-making, and that public policies should
not be oriented towards a telos.
The international community has recently adopted such a telos for their actions
by adopting the Millennium Development Goals. These represent the most
complete international agreement to date as to what development policies, both at
the national and international level, ought to pursue so that no human life is left with
34
SVERINE DENEULIN
unnecessary harms or lacks. These indicators are linked to the goals that have been
agreed by nation states at United Nations conferences during the 1990s. These
include: reducing extreme poverty (measured by the population below $1 per day
and child malnutrition); universal primary education (measured by the net enrolment
in primary education, completion of 4th grade of primary education and literacy rate
of 15 to 24 year-old); gender equality (measured by the ratio of girls to boys in
primary and secondary education and ratio of literate females to males); infant and
child mortality (measured by the infant mortality rate and under 5 mortality rate);
maternal mortality (measured by maternal mortality ratio and births attended by
skilled health personnel); reproductive health (measured by contraceptive prevalence
rate and HIV prevalence in 15 to 24 year-old pregnant women); and environment
(measured by population with access to safe water, forest area as a percentage of
national surface area, land area protected, GDP per unit of energy use and carbon
dioxide emissions).23 Although this vision of what is lacking to human relationships
represents the highest level of international consensus, it remains a vision always
open to revision. But the absence of certainty regarding what constitutes a good
human life is not a sufficiently warrant for rejecting the fact that enabling each
human being to live well is the telos of public policy.
INDIVIDUAL SUBJECTS
By situating the evaluative space of quality of life in the capability space, in what
individuals are able to be or do, Sens capability approach to development implies
that individuals are to be considered as the very subjects of development, both as
ends and means of development. Speaking of the deep afflictions that affect
humankind in terms of hunger, malnutrition, preventable diseases, poverty,
oppression, Sen underlines that, we have to recognise the role of individual
freedoms of different kinds in countering these afflictions. Indeed, individual agency
is, ultimately, central to addressing these deprivations.24
The capability approach does not however consider individual subjects in
detachment from the social setting in which they live. Because human beings live
and interact in societies, our understanding of what our own needs are and what
values and priorities we have reason to espouse may themselves depend on our
interactions with others.25 He argues that one cannot separate the thoughts, choices
and actions of individual human beings from the particular society in which they
live, since individuals are quintessentially social creatures. This leads Sen to
introduce the notion of socially dependent individual capabilities. The freedom and
agency that each individual enjoys is inescapably qualified and constrained by the
social, political and economic opportunities that are available to us.26 Individual
freedoms are inescapably linked to the existence of social arrangements, and our
opportunities and prospects depend crucially on what institutions exist and how they
function.27 For example, womens capability to read and write is often deeply
hindered by social arrangements or social norms regarding womens lives, or the
capability to be healthy is greatly enhanced by the social arrangement of family
kinship (and their implicit duty of mutual help). Individual freedom is thus
35
quintessentially a social product: because there is a two-way relation between (1)

social arrangements [such as economic, social and political opportunities] to expand
individual freedoms and (2) the use of individual freedoms not only to improve the
respective lives but also to make the social arrangements more appropriate and
effective.28 Development and the expansion of freedoms cannot occur without the
presence of institutions such as the market, public services, the judicial system,
political parties, the media, etc.
Despite the importance that the capability approach gives to the deep social
relationships that link individuals together, despite the crucial role of social
arrangements in the construction of individual freedoms themselves, Sen is very
reluctant to approach development with a supra-individual subject. Even if for
example, ethnicity, family structures or a societys democratic culture are seen as
very important elements in enhancing or impeding individual freedoms, social
arrangements are still to be investigated in terms of their contribution to enhancing
and guaranteeing the substantive freedoms of individuals.29 As Sen insists, all
actions finally bear in their effects on the lives that human beings live, lives which
are only lived by individuals and not by some supra-individual subjects. Individual
lives are deeply dependent and inter-connected, but they are not in fusion. As a
consequence, Sens capability approach concludes that, the intrinsic satisfactions
that occur in a life must occur in an individuals life, but in terms of causal
connections, they dependd on social interactions with others.30 Similarly, all actions
depend on individuals acting, and the expansion of individual freedoms depends on
the exercise of individual agency and on peoples ability to participate in the life of
the community. But does such an individually based approach to development
provide a sufficient normative framework to assess development and guide actions
towards the transformation of unjust structures?
Let us again take the example of the Dominican Republic and its poor
achievement of human freedoms for a large part of the population. The life of the
country is characterised by extensive migration to the United States (it is estimated
that about two million Dominicans, out of a population of eight, live in the US).
More than 10 per cent of Dominican households received remittances in 2002, and
income from remittances constituted 30 per cent of the total incomes of these
recipient households.31 Also, Dominican political life is characterised by a very high
degree of clientelistic practices that the country inherited as a legacy from its long
periods of dictatorship. The Dominican state could almost be compared to the
backyard garden of a caudillo that governs the state like an extended family. The
state is not seen as a responsible institution that regards each citizen as equal, but
citizens are regarded as competitive clients who are trying to win the favour of the
leader.
A political survey summarises the prevailing attitudes in Dominican society well,
showing how the structural problems caused by unjust structures have led to an
increase in clientelism/personalism, fatalism and providentialism in the last decade.
In only seven years, the proportion of Dominicans who believe that everything will
36
SVERINE DENEULIN
remain the same even though they would like to change things (fatalism) has risen
from 37 per cent in 1994 to 54 per cent in 2001, the proportion of Dominicans who
believe that a good president has to be like a father who comes to solve problems
(paternalism) has risen from 76 per cent to 86 per cent and the proportion of
Dominicans who believe that the problems of the country will be solved only if God
intervenes (providentialism) has risen from 63 per cent to 74 per cent.32 This is
illustrated by the high percentage of the government budget directly under the
personal control of the President. During the 1986-1996 period, the President
allocated 50 per cent of the total government budget without being accountable to
anyone. In 1998, this dropped to 20 per cent but the budget that the President
directly controls is still more than double the budget controlled by the health and
education ministries.33
There is little understanding of democracy as an instrument to build dialogue and
accountability between the government and its people, and even less of an
understanding of democracy as the means through which the basic needs of the
population can be provided. Clientelism survives as long as it is what the electorate,
masses and elites, expect from their government. Dominicans do not appear to use
their individual agency very much to address human deprivations, as Sen would
assume, but rather to maintain the status-quo by perpetuating clientelistic practices,
or by favouring escape from the domestic situation for better solutions abroad.
It is not an accident that poor people in the Dominican Republic do not use their
individual agency to transform unjust structures in their country, but use it instead to
perpetuate the status quo. There are historical reasons for this, but Sens capability
approach to development does not seem to have well integrated either these
processes of social action, or the social imprint that a countrys history leaves on
peoples capability to function as agents of their own or others interests even if
they wish to do so. Ricoeur has underlined that there is this continuous process of
recording human action which is history itself as the sum of marks, the fate of
which escapes the control of individual actors.34
And because of this, Ricoeurs ethics points to the necessity of thickening Sens
capability approach with socio-historical narratives that analyse the extent to which
history has left its imprint on current actions. Such socio-historical narratives would
help us to understand the socio-historical processes behind the exercise of individual
agency and their link with the removal of unfreedoms.
The notion of socio-historical narratives is linked to another central notion in
Paul Ricoeurs ethics, that of structures of living together. This he defines as
structures which belong to a particular historical community, which provide the
conditions for individual lives to flourish, and which are irreducible to interpersonal
relations and yet bound up with these.35 Two key characteristics can be highlighted
in this definition: history and the irreducibility to interpersonal relations. These two
key characteristics are indeed absent from the notion of social arrangements in
Sens capability approach, which remains instrumental to individual human
freedoms and which passes over in silence processes of historical construction
according to which social arrangements are historically produced and bear the social
imprint of past actions.
Creo que hay una falsa premisa aqui.

Que Sen no crea que los arreglos
sociale s en si mismos sean el espacio
evaluativo apropiado no significa que
no sean importantes. El mimso lo
reconoce asi y Deneulin misma lo dice
en la pagina anterior. Lo que asen dice
es que si los vamos a evaluar hay que
evakuarlos en terminos de lp que
finalmente producen en los individuos.
Nada mas. No que no influyen, no que
no son significativos, no que el peso de
la historia no existe. Sino que todo eso
debe vaorarse en funcion de lo que
finalmente las personas pueden ser o
hacer por ellos.
37
In addition, by affirming that states of affairs should be evaluated only according

to their goodness or badness for individuals, Sens capability approach considers
structures of living together as social arrangements that are instrumental to the
enhancement of individual capabilities. However, even though the intrinsic
satisfactions occur in an individuals life, the reality of development and the source
of the unfreedoms that oppress individual human beings, or inversely the source of
freedoms that allow individual lives to thrive, frequently do not lie in the lives of
individuals but in a collective locus that cannot be reduced to the sum of the
individuals concerned. For example, two years ago, the Costa Rican government
decided to open its telecommunication company, still state-owned, to private
participation. When that decision had been agreed in the Congress, an
unprecedented protest occurred throughout Costa Rica, which led to the revocation
of the Congresss decision. If Costa Rica is perhaps the only developing country
where successful resistance against privatisation attempts has occurred, this is not an
accident. It is the result of long socio-historical processes that have led to the
progressive emergence of social democracy, and the progressive building of a strong
sense of identity of Costa Ricans with their welfare institutions, especially with one
of its main symbols, the electricity and telecommunication company. As one Costa
Rican noted, the social democratic identity of the Costa Rican is still so entrenched
that a Costa Rican would prefer to wait six months to have a mobile phone and be
sure that the remotest village has a public phone box through public provision rather
than have a mobile phone provided by a private company immediately.36
The exercise of human freedom and choice cannot be separated from history and
community. If the choices that individuals make are partly dependent upon the
particular structures of living together in which they find themselves, and upon how
they react to these, as well upon autonomous choices that arise from their
personality or inner self, then it seems that the capability approach to development
can no longer consider individual agency as ultimately central to addressing
deprivations, as Sen affirms, but would rather have to consider socio-historical
agency (what human beings can really do or be given the particular socio-historical
structures in which they are living) as ultimately central to addressing these
deprivations. People do not exercise their individual agency and do not participate in
the life of the community in a vacuum, but they do so within a socio-historical
context which allows them to exercise their individual agency in a certain way, in a
way that will or will not promote the human well-being of the members of the
community.
Socio-historical agency rests upon the existence of certain structures of living
together, and as such it rests upon the definition of its constitutive elements. Sociohistorical agency is something that belongs to a particular historical community, is
the condition of existence for individual agency, and is irreducible to interpersonal
relations and yet bound up with these. This entails that the subjects of development
are neither individual subjects, nor collective subjects, but are both individual and
collective. As a consequence, the good of human life is brought about neither only
by the collections of private or individual actions, nor only by the action of a
collective subject which sacrifices the parts to itself. The good of humans is brought
38
SVERINE DENEULIN
about by an action that is common to both the collective and individuals into which
it flows back, and which, in turn, must rely on it.37
FREEDOM PROCEDURALISM
Throughout his works, Sen has emphasised that people should not be seen as
passive, spoon-fed patients of social welfare institutions, but actively involved in
shaping their own destiny. Each person has to be seen as a doer and a judge
instead of a beneficiary.38 In that respect, the capability approach grants a
fundamental role to public debate and democratic decision-making, or in more
generic terms, to the ability to participate in the life of the community and to take
decisions in matters that affect ones own life and the life of fellow-human beings.
This ability to do something not only for oneself but also for other members of the
society can even be considered as one of the elementary freedoms that people
have reason to value, [] even among people who lead very deprived lives in
material terms.39
Sen attributes three fundamental roles to democratic freedom, or the ability to
participate in the life of the community.40 First, it is of fundamental intrinsic worth
to human well-being, it is a critically important component of the capabilities that
individuals have reason to choose and value. Second, given the open-endedness and
the plurality of the different capabilities that people have reason to choose and value,
there is a strong methodological case for emphasizing the need to assign explicitly
evaluative weights to different components of quality of life (or of well-being) and
then to place the chosen weights for open discussion and critical scrutiny.41
Democratic freedom plays a crucial role in specifying and choosing the capabilities
that are seen as worthwhile. The role of public discussion and interactions in the
emergence of shared values and commitments42 is essential in specifying a
societys underlying values and in choosing the capabilities that are valuable and
worth pursuing. The role of participation also extends to the choices of the means
that will bring about the chosen priorities, and hence to the kind of policies required
to promote the chosen capabilities. Third, democratic freedom is also of constitutive
importance in value formation. It clarifies and constructs a societys values and
priorities, builds consensus and achieves compromises that prevent conflicts.
Sen has been very reluctant to move beyond consequentialism in promoting
individual freedoms. He defines consequential evaluation as the discipline of
responsible choice based on the choosers evaluation of states of affairs, including
consideration of all the relevant consequences viewed in the light of the exact
circumstances of that choice.43 The success of the public debate in choosing the
valuable capabilities and actions that promote these is to be assessed solely in terms
of their consequences for individual freedoms. Sen defends a broad consequentialist
approach to decision-making, arguing that the informational basis of evaluation
should go beyond the space of utilities and be broadened to include individual
freedoms and rights, rather than giving procedures a greater weight. The only
criterion for decision-making that the capability approach offers is that public
39
decisions be democratically agreed upon and have positive consequences for the
expansion of the freedoms that people have reason to choose and value. But is the
faith that Sens capability approach has in democratic decision-making sufficient to
transform unjust structures?
For example, referring to the choice between cultural tradition and poverty on
the one hand and modernity and material prosperity on the other hand, Sen writes:
If a traditional way of life has to be sacrificed to escape grinding poverty or
minuscule longevity, then it is the people directly involved who must have the
opportunity to participate in deciding what should be chosen.44 But in todays
structures of inequality, one may wonder what margins people have for free
decisions. There are structures of inequality and power that leave indigenous
communities with little choice other than that of choosing a modern way of life, or
structures of inequality and power that leave countries with little choice other than
that of choosing, or rather accepting, through democratic deliberation, the pursuit
of development through the privatisation of public services.
One of the major reasons pressing us to revise our faith in what the exercise of
political freedom can do for removing unfreedoms is that the exercise of political
freedom occurs in a context of power inequalities with conflicting interests. The
world political ideological system and the world configuration of political power
impose constraints on political systems that one cannot escape. For example, a
socially progressive government was democratically elected in the Dominican
Republic in 1963. But the Cold War and the fear of another Cuban revolution in the
region led to a military coup orchestrated by an alliance between the elite, the
military and the Church, and supported by the U.S.
Sens capability approach does not pass over in silence the influence of socioeconomic inequalities upon political inequalities, which give disproportionate
power to those who command crucial resources such as income, education and
influential connections.45 Drze and Sen insist however that the presence of
inequalities cannot justify authoritarian regimes that would provide a more equal
basis for exercising political freedom. Even if a perfectly benevolent dictator were to
provide all the fundamental human freedoms (so that no member of that political
community were lacking food, shelter, health, education, etc.), an important aspect
of human well-being would be violated if the members of the community were
deprived of their say in the organization of the community. This is why Drze and
Sen insist that the only route that can be taken to promote human freedoms is
enhancing the political power of the unprivileged, so that they can exercise their
political freedom on the same basis of equality as the more privileged.
They propose two ways for enhancing the political power of the underprivileged
and for responding to the problem of poor peoples claims being trumped by the
claims and interests of the more powerful. Firstly, the capability of the
underprivileged for self-assertion must be enhanced by offering incentives for them
to organize in political organizations through which they will gain sufficient power
to counteract the power of the privileged. Secondly, a sense of solidarity must be
created between the most privileged and the underprivileged (e.g. intellectuals and
higher social classes speaking on behalf of the underprivileged and defending their
40
SVERINE DENEULIN
interests). However, Drze and Sen do not address how these two crucial factors are
to be brought about. If a country is driven by powerful elites who are not sensitive to
the needs of the less privileged, and if powerful elites who are directing policy
decisions impede the poor from organizing themselves politically (for example by
maintaining low educational standards by not improving the public education
system), one can have legitimate doubts about how these changes are ever to emerge
in unequal societies.
Sens faith in what human freedom can do to remove unfreedoms and transform
unjust structures remains intact throughout his works. Paul Ricoeurs faith in what
human freedom can do to transform unjust structures also remains intact throughout
his works, but with the following fundamental distinction: in contrast to Sens
capability approach, the conception of human freedom in Ricoeurs ethics is that of
a fallible human freedom, a freedom which assumes the responsibility for evil.46
This openness of human freedom to the possibility of choosing to do wrong is linked
to the fallibility of human life. Politics is certainly a privileged place in which
human fallibility reveals itself and in which it shows the most important
consequences upon its victims through the sufferings that free human choices
impose upon others. In his capability approach, Sen devotes no space to the
possibility that human choices are vulnerable to wrongdoings.
Ricoeur situates the source of human fallibility, of why people do not always
make choices that will remove the many unfreedoms they suffer from, in the finitude
of human freedom. The vulnerability or fragility of political communities is
precisely the locus in which human responsibility emerges: We are rendered
responsible by the fragile,47 proclaims Ricoeur. Because pursuing the aim of the
good life, or good living together, is rendered fragile by the fallibility of human life,
Ricoeur invites us to think about the crucial role of moral principles:
Because there is evil, the aim of the good life has to be submitted to the test of moral
obligation, which might be described in the following terms: Act solely in accordance
with the maxim by which you can wish at the same time that what ought not to be,
namely evil, will indeed not exist.48
Similarly, a truly human freedom-centred approach to development is based on a

freedom that is open to the possibility of evil and that assumes the responsibility for
it. Thickening Sens freedom proceduralism with certain moral principles of
decision-making may make the enhancement of human well-being less vulnerable,
and may offer an approach to structuring societies in accord with principles of
justice fashioned in view of good living together.
While insisting on the importance of moral principles, Ricoeur has abstained
from specifying such principles, since practical wisdom, or phronsis, is to have the
last word in decision-making. But phronsis does indeed contain implicit principles.
In a major paper entitled The Discernment of Perception: An Aristotelian
Conception of Private and Public Rationality, Martha Nussbaum discussed a strong
alternative to conventional approaches to practical rationality and decision-making
procedures.49 Central to phronsis is the ability to take decisions in the realm of
contingent and particular realities. Given that decisions are always to be taken
Que no lo haga un aspecto central o

que no lo explocite como posibilidad,
tampoco lo niega. Dice que es
importsnte, no que no hara opciones
malas
41
within the messy situations in which one finds oneself, and not inferred from a set of
abstract universal conditions, acting according to phronsis entails that the first step
to decision-making consists of perceiving what is at stake in a particular
circumstance, and perceiving whether an action is required. If so, one must then
decide what sort of particular action will be the most suitable given the particular
contextual and historical situation in which that action is to be taken.50
In Aristotelian ethics, being practically rational is not a matter of being under the
control of a science characterised by general laws, but is a matter of acting in
response to the particular circumstances of each situation. Reasoning has to adapt
itself to the uniqueness and specificities of cases, because general principles, given
their inflexibility, do not allow an understanding of all the complexity and
singularity of concrete situations. This is why, within the framework of phronsis, it
is not possible to establish unchanging laws or abstract principles in decisionmaking regarding human matters, given that the subject of human matters is the
contingent.51 That general laws will always fail in the domain of the contingent does
not entail that principles cannot exist, but it entails that principles have to be flexible
and espouse the shapes of the context, that is, each principle will have to espouse the
socio-historical reality in which that principle or abstract ideal condition is being
applied.
Although phronsis is a practical rationality that responds to contextual features,
it includes more than context-sensitivity, since it is a particular form of practical
rationality that is guided by some knowledge of what is good within the particular
situation. And in order to know what is good within a situation, one needs to know
what is good beyond what is specific to a particular situation. Phronsis is thus not
knowledge of universals, since it guides actions in particular circumstances.
However, it needs knowledge of the universal in order to recognise what is at stake
in a particular circumstance, and in order to guide action within that circumstance.
For example, a doctor needs theoretical knowledge of what health is, as without that
prior theoretical knowledge he would be like an archer who does not know which
target to aim at.52 Therefore, although totally dependent on the socio-historical
context in which action takes place, phronsis has to include such a pre-conception
of the human good. Translated into the capability approach to development,
phronsis implies that some theoretical understanding of the human good is needed,
namely some understanding of what human well-being consists of, but that
theoretical understanding needs to espouse the socio-historical context in which a
judgement is made and action undertaken towards the good of the political
community.
The most central normative requirement of the practical rationality underlying
freedom proceduralism may well be a matter of judging the various components of
human well-being in the particular socio-historical reality in which the judgement is
being made and in which human beings are functioning poorly. Making decisions
according to the perception of which people are falling short of a good human life
and how they are falling short can be called the requirement of priority: when
promoting well-being, one should give priority to promoting the well-being of those
who are worst off.53 This requirement of priority might for example be assessed
through the distribution of public spending such as the percentage of public
42
SVERINE DENEULIN
expenditure (in terms of GDP) allocated to primary health and education, or the
proportion of public services allocated to rural and urban areas.
CONCLUSION
Human freedom always exercises itself on the basis of, within and for the sociohistorical communities to which one belongs, and todays human freedom builds
itself on that communitys socio-historical legacy and fallibility. Because of this, a
freedom-centred view of development would have to be thickened if it is to offer
theoretical benchmarks for action within these socio-historical communities and
remove the many unfreedoms that leave the members of these socio-historical
communities with so little choice to live the way they have reason to choose and
value.
The table below summarizes how Ricoeurs ethical vision could be one way of
thickening Sens approach to development and make it a more effective guide for
action to transform unjust structures and remove the many unfreedoms that leave
people with so little choice.
Freedom
consequentialism
Sens development as freedom

Promoting the freedoms that
people have reason to choose
and value
Ricoeurs ethical vision

Aiming at the good life by induction from what
is lacking
Individual as
subjects
Promoting the freedoms of

individuals through individual
agency
Aiming at good living together on the basis of

and within socio-historical structures through
socio-historical agency
Freedom
proceduralism
Expressing individual agency

through the exercise of
political freedom
Exercising socio-historical agency through the

presence of just institutions that embody the
principle of priority identified by phronsis
Thickening Sens capability approach with a vision of the good life, with sociohistorical narratives, and with moral principles, constraining free human action by
linking it to the aim of the good life, with and for others and in just institutions,
raises concerns regarding paternalism and infringement on a human beings
freedom. But these concerns seem rather unavoidable consequences of the nature of
human freedom itself. A freedom-centred vision of development would eschew
human responsibility if its account of freedom did not fully assume what it is, a
human freedom which exercises itself within the fallible, historical and communal
condition of human life.
Sverine Deneulin is Research Associate at the Von Hgel Institute, St Edmunds
College, Cambridge, UK.
43
NOTES
1
Sen, 1999b: xii.

Drze and Sen, 2002: 3.
3
Sen, 1999b: xi.
4
Ibid.: 249.
5
Ricoeur, 1992: 172.
6
Sen, 2004: 336.
7
Robeyns, 2005: 96.
8
Alkire, 2005: 117.
9
See for example Stewart, 2002.
10
See for example Sen, 1980, 1985a,b, 1987, 1992, 1999b.
11
Sen, 1992: 43.
12
Ibid.: 83.
13
Ibid.: 44.
14
Ibid.: 44-5.
15
Sen, 1999b: 70-4. For a discussion of Rawls Theory of Justice and Political Liberalism, see Nicholas
Sagovsky in this volume.
16
The average GNP per capita growth rate during the 1990s was 4 per cent. But public spending on
education (as a percentage of GDP) was only 2.5 per cent in 1998 and public spending on health
amounted to 1.5 per cent, while the Latin American average was 4.5 and 3.1 per cent respectively (data
from the UN Economic Commission for Latin America).
17
EIU, 2001.
18
All data in the paragraph from UNDP, 2005.
19
For her list of central human capabilities, see Nussbaum 1988, 1992, 1993, 1999, 2000, 2003.
20
Nussbaum, 1988:153.
21
Ricoeur, 1991: 177.
22
Ibid.: 178.
23
See http:// www.un.org/millenniumgoals.
24
Sen, 1999b: x.
25
Sen, 2002: 79.
26
Sen, 1999b: xi-xii.
27
Ibid.:142.
28
Ibid.: 31.
29
Ibid.: xiii.
30
Sen, 2002: 85.
31
UNDP, 2005.
32
Brea and Duarte, 2002.
33
World Bank, 2001.
34
Ricoeur, 1981: 206-7.
35
Paul Ricoeurs original definition refers to the notion of institution: By institution, we understand the
structure of living together as this belongs to a historical community, a structure irreducible to
interpersonal relations and yet bound up with these. Ricoeur, 1992: 194.
36
For an account of the influence of these socio-historical processes on Costa Ricas development path,
see Deneulin, 2005a.
37
See for example Maritain, 1946.
38
Sen, 1985b: 208.
39
Sen and Drze, 1995: 106.
40
Sen, 1999a: 3-17.
41
Sen, 1999b: 81.
42
Ibid.: 253.
43
Sen, 2000: 477.
44
Sen, 1999b: 31.
45
Sen and Drze, 2002: 28.
2
44
SVERINE DENEULIN
46
Ricoeur, 1986: vii.

Ricoeur, 1996: 16.
48
Sen, 1999b: 218.
49
Nussbaum, 1990.
50
Nicomachean Ethics 1109b20-23, 1126b2-5.
51
NE
E 1104a1-10, 1107a29-33, 1137b13ff. Aristotle emphasizes that, in the contingencies of human matters
or in the ethical domain, the only possible rule is the rule of Lesbos, an instrument used in
architecture in Lesbos that contained curves that could only be measured through a rule that adapted
exactly to the walls.
52
NE
E 1094a22-26, 1104a1-10, 1142a25-29.
53
See Parfit, 1997. For other principles which could thicken Sens freedom proceduralism, see Deneulin,
2005b.
47
REFERENCES
Alkire, Sabina (2005), Why the Capability Approach, Journal of Human Developmentt 6(1): 115-133
Aristotle (1995), Nicomachean Ethics, Revised Oxford Translation, ed. Jonathan Barnes, Princeton:
Princeton University Press
Brea, Ramonina, and Isis Duarte (2002), Hacia dnde Va la Democracia Dominicana?, Santo Domingo:
Pontificia Universidad Catlica Madre y Maestra
Deneulin, Sverine (2005a), Development as Freedom and the Costa Rican Human Development Story,
Oxford Development Studies, 33(3/4): 493-510.
(2005b), Promoting Human Freedoms under Conditions of Inequalities: A Procedural
Framework, Journal of Human Developmentt 6(1): 75-92
Drze, Jean, and Amartya Sen (1995), India: Economic Development and Social Opportunity, Delhi:
Oxford University Press
(2002), India: Development and Participation, Delhi: Oxford University Press
Economist Intelligence Unit (2001). The Dominican Republic: Country Report. October. London: EIU
Maritain, Jacques (1946), The Person and the Common Good,
d Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame
Press
Nussbaum, Martha (1988), Nature, Function and Capability: Aristotle on Political Distribution, Oxford
Studies in Ancient Philosophyy Supplementary Volume: 145-184
(1990), The Discernement of Perception: An Aristotelian Conception of Private and Public
Rationality, in M. Nussbaum, Loves Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature, Oxford:
(1992), Human Functioning and Social Justice: In Defense of Aristotelian Essentialism,
Political Theoryy 20: 202-246
(1993), Non-Relative Virtues: An Aristotelian Approach, in M. Nussbaum and A. Sen, eds,
Quality of Life, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 242-269
(1999), Women and Cultural Universals, in M. Nussbaum, Sex and Social Justice, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 29-54
(2000), Women and Human Development: A Study in Human Capabilities, Cambridge:
(2003), Capabilities as Fundamental Entitlements: Sen and Social Justice, Feminist
Economics 9/2-3
Parfit, Derek (1997), Equality or Priority, Ratio Juris 10(3): 202-221
Ricoeur, Paul (1981), Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences, John B. Thompson, trans. Cambridge:
(1986), Fallible Man, Charles A. Kelbley, trans. New York: Fordham University Press
(1991), Lectures autour du Politique, Paris: Seuil
(1992), One Self as Another, Kathleen Blamey, trans., Chicago: University of Chicago Press
(1996), Fragility and Responsibility, in Richard Kearny, ed., Paul Ricoeur: The Hermeneutics
of Action, London: Sage
Robeyns, Ingrid (2005), The Capability Approach: A Theoretical Survey, Journal of Human
Developmentt 6(1): 93-114
45
Sen, Amartya K. (1980), Equality of What?, in S. McMurrin, ed., Tanner Lectures on Human Values,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
(1985a), Commodities and Capabilities, Amsterdam: North-Holland
(1985b), Well-Being Agency and Freedom: The Dewey Lectures 1984. Journal of Philosophy
82(4): 169-221
(1987), The Standard of Living, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
(1992), Inequality Re-examined, Oxford: Clarendon Press
(1999a), Democracy as Universal Value, Journal of Democracyy 10(3): 3-17
(1999b), Development as Freedom, Oxford: Oxford University Press
(2000), Consequential Evaluation and Practical Reason, Journal of Philosophyy 97(9): 477-502
(2002), Symposium on Development as Freedom: Response to Commentaries, Studies in
Comparative International Developmentt 37(2): 78-86
(2004), Elements of a Theory of Human Rights, Philosophy and Public Affairs 32(4): 315-56
Stewart, Frances (2002), Dynamic Interactions Between the Macro-Environment, Development
Thinking and Group Behaviour, in J. Heyer, R. Thorp and F. Stewart, eds, Group Behaviour and
Development, Oxford: Oxford University Press
United Nations Development Programme (2000), Human Development Report, New-York: Oxford
(2005), National Human Development Report, UNDP: Santo Domingo
UNESCO (2000), World Culture Report, Paris: UNESCO
World Bank (2001), Dominican Republic Poverty Assessment, Washington D.C.: The World Bank
CHAPTER 3
SABINA ALKIRE
STRUCTURAL INJUSTICE AND DEMOCRATIC

PRACTICE
The Trajectory in Sens Writings
Individuals live and operate in a world of institutions, many of which operate across
borders. Our opportunities and prospects depend crucially on what institutions exist and
how they function.1
We too bow down to power, not to that of a dictator and a political bureaucracy allied
with him, but to the anonymous power of the market, of success, of public opinion, of
common sense or rather, of common nonsense and of the machine whose servants
we have become. Our moral problem is mans indifference to himself.2
INTRODUCTION
Thats not fair cries a three year old when the philosopher parent allows an
acquisitive well-dressed four year old to put the toy into her purse. In crying out, the
child is drawing attention to the parents negligence, flawed reasoning, or unjust act.
Implicit in this complaint is the hope that the parent (a single authoritative person),
will grasp the injustice and act to correct it.
However messy and uncertain a business negotiation about justice with threeyear-olds may be, they are distinct from negotiations pertaining to structural
injustice. In the case of the three-year-old, a single accused yet authoritative agent
considers, decides, and responds (although the response involves others). In the case
of structural injustice, multiple agents coordinate joint action, the fruits of which are
unjust thus multiple agents would have to act differently in order to reverse the
injustice. For this reason, the appropriate locus of complaint about structural
injustice is actually not the unjust structure itself but rather the multiple hands and
minds that drive it.
In this way, an unjust structure might be likened to a Trojan horse. Although a
Trojan horse appears to be a single entity, it cannot think nor act on its own behalf.
Only persons in its darkened interior, or persons outside, can do so. Thus it might
not prove altogether constructive to expend a great deal of energy urging a Trojan
horse to adopt a motto of justice and poverty reduction. However amenable the
47
48
SABINA ALKIRE
mild-mannered beast might appear to be to such demands, its views are not able to
sway the situation at all. Different tactics are required.
But then to whom should we fruitfully address accusations of structural injustice
related to human deprivation and how? Who are the unidentified multiple agents
whose action could change the situation?
To address these questions this chapter first synthesises the development of
public action in the writings of Amartya Sen. It begins with Sens well-known work
on the role of public outcry in effecting positive change in famine-prone situations.
The chapter then traces related concepts such as public action and participation, and
the role Sen envisages these to take in addressing injustices such as chronic hunger
and educational deprivation. The chapter also analyses the role of agency in value
formation and change. Clearly, Sens work comments on democratic practice and
related collective actions as instruments by which to confront structural injustice.
But by what mechanism are these instruments to occur? How would the institutional
Trojan horse respond?
Within Sens work, one clear possible mechanism relates to the self-interest of
decision-makers: politicians facing re-election must respond to crowds. However,
many of the committees who operate unjust institutions are not accountable to the
public for their term of office, nor will be in the foreseeable future. Sen also
commends the cultivation of bonds of solidarity and imperfect obligation in order to
connect diverse groups and individuals. But, is this enough?
The chapter argues that even if forceful public outcry emerged, there is a further
problem an embedded collective action problem. The embedded collective
action problem is that people within the accused institutions still need to organize
and work together for constructive change. Creating incentives and avenues for them
to do so could enable Trojan horse drivers who recognise their imperfect obligations
better to act on them.
In this way, the chapter synthesises some of Sens writings on the terms in
question. It draws together threads of Sens work that might be of interest to those
who argue that the capability approach is individualistic, and to those who claim it
ignores power.3 To engage more directly with those critiques would require,
however, a further study.
Before beginning, let me clarify two terms, which will from the start narrow the
terrain of discussion. The chapter restricts attention to those forms of structural
injustice that arise when institutions are designed to take into account and further
some set of interests, but are nott designed to take into account other interests that
they harm, certain capabilities that they cause to contract, or opportunity costs that
their operation entails. Furthermore the institution, otherwise configured, would be
able to expand (or fail to harm) those capabilities without comparable or greater
harm to other people or groups (rough as these comparisons may be). Thus structural
injustice, as interpreted here, is, in principle, amenable to human action and redress.
The many examples of alleged structural injustice range from inappropriate
structural adjustment conditionalities, to measures taken to attract foreign
investment, to investments in military hardware at considerable social cost, to
environmental degradation from industrial waste.
STRUCTURAL INJUSTICE AND DEMOCRATIC PRACTICE
49
Institutions may be organizations or groups of organizations such as the

international agencies, NGOs, government ministries, or private sector firms. They
may also be a vaguer set of norms and rules such as public policies, cultural
traditions, or economic institutions.
FAMINE AND PUBLIC OUTCRY
The case for relating public policy to a close scrutiny of its actual effects is certainly
very strong, but the need to protest to rage, to holler is not any weaker.4
Let us begin with a familiar example. In most states, There is no law against dying
of hunger.5 Yet public action, including protests of injustice, can effectively
prevent famines. Sens work on famine gave rise to this signal insight, which has
been explored with energy and depth by a number of others.6 The insight is often
expressed this way: No famine has ever taken place in the history of the world in a
functioning democracy.7
With reference to the topic at hand namely poverty-related structural injustice
this body of famine studies is central to consider because it was the first to frame
hunger as an issue of structural injustice rather than lack of food availability or a
market failure or other natural causes.
Hunger isintolerable in the modern world in a way it could not have been in the past.
This is not so much because it is more intense, but because widespread hunger is so
unnecessary and unwarranted in the modern world... If politics is the art of the
possible, then conquering world hunger has become a political issue in a way it could
not have been in the past.8
How did this politicization in which political action was identified as a lever
for change and a source for hope emerge?
The argument was initially built put forward in Sens Poverty and Famines, later
expanded into three volumes of studies, which examined physiological, marketbased, economic, weather-related, and political aspects of famine as well as endemic
hunger in different countries.9 Three observations across these studies support the
politicization of famine as an issue of structural injustice.
One key independence that Sen established empirically and early was the
independence of famine from food production and availability. For example, the
famines in Bengal 1943, Ethiopia 1973 and Bangladesh 1974 all occurred in the
absence of a decline in food availability.10 Further, Sen observed that since 1947
when India became independent (and since which it has not experienced famine),
per head production levels were lower than nineteenth century levels and also lower
than in many famine-affected countries. India was also subject to droughts and
floods of a magnitude sufficient to cause famine conditions. Famine is a case of
structural injustice because it can be addressed by human action.
Another observation was that famine impacted different sections of the
population unequally: different groups typically do have very different
commanding powers over food, and an over-all shortage brings out the contrasting
powers in stark clarity.11 This gave further evidence of injustice: that some
weathered the famine intact or even with economic gain while others perished.
50
SABINA ALKIRE
A third observation related to the feasibility of a public response. Having studied

successful experiences in avoiding famine, especially in India and many African
countries, Drze and Sen observe that
These experiences firmly demonstrate how easy it is to exterminate famines if public
support is well planned on a regular basis to protect the entitlements of vulnerable
groups. It is also clear that the eradication of famines need not await a major
breakthrough in raising the per-capita availability of food, or in radically reducing
its variance (even though these goals are important in themselves and can be and must
be promoted in the long run by well-organized public policy). Public action can
decisively eliminate famines now.12
These observations about the injustice of famine and the potential for human
response (however fallible and imperfect) enabled famine to be framed as a political
issue, in the sense that action by the public at large could catalyze the necessary
public and economic actions which might not arise in the absence of public outcry.
No attempt was made, however, to argue that adequate policy responses to famine
conditions or indeed conditions of hunger more generally would always look the
same. Rather, Drze and Sen argued that hunger occurs in populations with a
diversity of political systems, agricultural systems, forms of collective action, and
social balances of power. Further, the public is heterogeneous in terms of class,
ownership, occupation and also gender, community and culture so public action
needs to be itself closely observed because it will often seek to benefit only selective
groups rather than the whole. Hence state action and the policies appropriate to a
given situation may take a wide variety of forms, which may involve employment
provision (in particular), food production, food distribution, the maintenance of food
stocks, health care and epidemic controls, adjustments to incentives, early warning
systems, and actions to induce economic growth and expand economically
productive activities. And of course, the market can and must complement public
action, but again its potential will vary in different settings. For example if income
support for the need is available, the markets may be able to provide the needed
food. The capacity of particular markets, the states, and publics at a given time differ
widely and must be examined. Hence, The need to consider a plurality of levers
and a heterogeneity of mechanisms is hard to escape in the strategy of public action
for social security.13 Thus public action can be an effective catalyst even though the
policy actions it must catalyse are complex and varied.
As the title of Hunger and Public Action suggests, the set of actions which did
emerge systematically as of critical importance for sustained responses to famine
included political protest, journalism and other forms of adversarial as well as
cooperative conflicts between the state and participants from the public at large.14
These informal mechanisms of reporting and anticipating famine threats were
described as being effective on various levels. For example at a basic level, they
simply provide information about an impending situation information that was
dreadfully lacking in China during its great famine in 1958-61. They could also, in
various ways, apply pressures that may make it politically compelling to respond
to these danger signals and do something about them urgently.15 In this way,
democratic practices emerged as a desirable and adequate response to famine
conditions.
51
The remainder of the chapter will explore whether and how other kinds of
extreme human deprivation may be politicised so as to catalyse an effective
response. But it is worth pointing out that this conversation is premised on
democratic conditions. It leaves unaddressed the evident problem of what forms of
collective action (if any) would be effective in dictatorships, authoritarian regimes,
or false democracies, in which those who raise an outcry are coercively silenced.
DEPRIVATION AND PARTICIPATORY PROCESSES
Hunger and Public Action also fingered the very obvious next-door problem that,
while public mechanisms of democracy seem to be sufficient for addressing famine,
the same public mechanisms are clearly insufficient for addressing endemic hunger.
India, for example, has done well in famine prevention, but shockingly poorly in the
elimination of undernourishment. Rather than arguing that public outcry was not
relevant in this case, Drze and Sen argued repeatedly that it was terribly important
in these cases as well just more difficult. They wrote, the elimination of regular
hunger and undernutrition is a much harder task than the eradication of famines
because the numbers of people affected are far greater, and because the methods
needed for a remedy are wider and longer term. Put simply, hunger is a many
headed monster.16 In particular, the elimination of hunger requires attention to
employment and food entitlements, but also the promotion of health care and
elementary education, as well as clean water, living quarters, and sanitation.
As in the case of famine, Drze, Sen, and others identified numerous countries
that have done well on these things with and without economic growth. Success
cases had in common the use of public support in general and of public
provisioning in particular as well as accurate information and political
determination.17 Importantly, they also found that measures sufficient to redress
hunger are affordable even to poor countries. Finally, here again, systematically, the
authors found that in a pluralist setting, action by the public-at-large could
complement public provisioning in critical ways, and it could also serve an essential
adversarial role in holding political leaders accountable for sustaining policies
necessary to combat deprivation. Hunger and Public Action concludes with these
sentences: It is, as we have tried to argue and illustrate, essential to see the public
not merely as the patient whose well-being commands attention, but also as the
agent whose actions can transform society. Taking note of that dual role is central
to understanding the challenge of public action against hunger.18
India: Development and Participation also developed the case for strengthening
public participation and democratic practice because of its instrumental role in
reducing deprivation (as well as other instrumentally and intrinsically valuable roles
it may have).19 Here the treatment is more systematic. In Hunger and Public Action,
the term public action had encompassed both the participation by the public-atlarge as well as public policies and government action. In India: Development and
Participation a number of distinctions are identified. One is the distinction between
democratic ideals (freedom of expression, participation in key decisions, equitable
distribution of power, public accountability), democratic institutions (for example
52
SABINA ALKIRE
the market, constitutional rights, effective courts, responsive electoral systems,

functioning parliaments and assemblies, open and free media, and participatory
institutions of local governance), and democratic practice.20 Democratic practice is
used throughout the book to encompass the ability of an active public-at-large to
influence democratic institutions so that these respond to public values. Democratic
practice which Drze and Sen hold to be importantly distinct from institutions yet
influenced by them and able in turn to influence them is discussed in greatest
detail of the three. It is, they argue, the area in which India needs the greatest
strengthening.
The barriers to the full exercise of democratic practice are several. Drze and
Sen name three: dysfunctional or corrupt institutions that prevent it (electoral fraud);
inadequately skilled or motivated citizens; and powerful social inequalities (or
special interests) that usurp common agendas and render democratic practice
ineffective. At the risk of some oversimplification, the foundations of democratic
practice may, thus, be described as facilityy (functional democratic institutions),
involvementt (informed public engagement with these institutions), and equity (a fair
distribution of power).21 These foundations are discussed together with the
situations that threaten them. In particular, the pernicious effects of social and
economic inequality, and of power imbalances, emerge as highly significant: The
central relevance of equity arises from the fact that a fair distribution of power is a
basicindeed fundamentalrequirement of democracy.22
In Hunger and Public Action, and Poverty and Famine, public participation
entered the discussion largely although not entirely by any means because it was
instrumental to obtaining desired outcomes. India: Development and Participation
continued to make a strong case for the instrumental value of democratic practice in
supporting the policies required to address deprivations and spur development. The
fundamental orientation of the book was to enquire what human agency could do
collectively to improve the quality of peoples lives, given that their lives are greatly
influenced by the world around.
The world social in the expression social opportunity (extensively used in the first
edition of this book) is a useful reminder not to view individuals and their opportunities
in isolated terms. The options that a person has depend greatly on relations with others
and on what the state and other institutions do. We shall be particularly concerned with
those opportunities that are strongly influenced by social circumstances and public
policy, especially those relating to education, health, nutrition, social equity, civil
liberties, and other basic aspects of the quality of life.23
The approach taken in India: Development and Participation also supplemented

the instrumental approach, by appreciating the intrinsic and the constitutive values
of democratic practice and public participation.24 These other ways of appreciating
the value of agency were also voiced by Sen in other writings as we will see briefly
below.25
India: Development and Participation ends by revisiting the argument of the
entire book through the quote of Dr. Ambedkar, the chair of the Constituent
Assemblys Drafting Committee who was responsible in large measure for drafting
the Indian Constitution a constitution that safeguards many social as well as
economic capabilities. He wrote:
53
On the 26th January 1950 [when the constitution comes into effect], we are going to
enter into a life of contradictions. In politics we will have equality and in social and
economic life we will have inequality. 26
Drze and Sen argue that India needs to enrich democratic and participatory
processes much more in order to face current challenges social, political,
economic, and military effectively.
These discussions lead the reader to appreciate the considerable power that
public action and participation and democratic practice can have, and to regret
situations in which this beneficial force does not arise (or is crushed, or merely
ignored). But how can this outcry be framed, made, channelled, and what does one
do when it does not arise or arises but does not take root? The next two sections
introduce two sets of concepts. The first are related to agency and process freedoms;
the second are related to affiliation between people. Then we return to exactly this
question.
INTRINSIC AND CONSTITUTIVE ASPECTS OF DEMOCRATIC PRACTICE
Clearly, in the case of famine, participation and democratic practice have a
significant instrumental value in catalyzing an effective response. Yet Sen, as well
as Drze and Sen, have argued that these also have intrinsic and constitutive
aspects.27 The intrinsic value of agency is a consistent feature of Sens work:
Acting freely and being able to choose are, in this view, directly conducive to wellbeing, not just because more freedom makes more alternatives available.28
Participation, being a limited expression of agency, can have a value both as agency
on behalf of oneself, and as the power to act on behalf of others to whom one is
sympathetic or committed for other reasons.
Participation also has intrinsic value for the quality of life. Indeed being able to do
something not only for oneself but also for other members of the society is one of the
elementary freedoms which people have reason to value. The popular appeal of social
movements in poor communities suggests that this basic capability is highly valued
even among people who lead very deprived lives in material terms.29
The important point to note here is that participation on others behalf may be
valuable to individuals who are and who are not directly affected by the
concerns against which they act.
Sen also argues that, the practice of democracy gives citizens an opportunity to
learn from one another, and helps society to form its values and priorities In this
sense, democracy has constructive importance.30 He cites the example of declining
fertility rates, which have been much influenced by public discussion of the bad
effects of high fertility rates on the community at large and especially on the lives of
young women.31Public discussions of family planning (fuelled by new information)
gradually led to a re-shaping of the values around family and child-bearing. Two
aspects influenced this change: new information (learning from one another about
family planning, declining infant mortality rates, overpopulation, economic analysis
of alternative family structures) and a critical reflection on values (the value
of many children for reasons of status and labor force, in relation to the value of
maternal health, and the value of enabling higher aspirations for ones children).
54
SABINA ALKIRE
These two aspects may be critical elements to awakening public action of the
requisite scale and energy.
SOLIDARITY, IMPERFECT OBLIGATION AND PLURAL AFFILIATION
So, to return to our question, how can public outcry and democratic engagement be
encouraged in situations where it may not be in evidence with sufficient force?
Clearly the appropriate response will vary considerably depending upon the features
of the specific situation. If there is a situation in which decision-makers are all or
mainly accountable to the collective, for example, if they come up for re-election,
then the mechanism of influence is not terribly mysterious. However in many of the
institutions direct accountability links might not pertain or might be fragile.
Looking, again, across Sens writings, one notes recurrent attention paid to the
moral or normative links between the relatively well-off or powerful, and the
deprived. These linkages are referred to under different terms: solidarity, imperfect
obligation, even the development of plural affiliations. And the relationship between
these terms is not altogether transparent. Yet it would seem that one aspect of
increasing democratic practice of the sort that generates effective participation will
involve a strengthening of these cross-class relationships.
In India: Development and Participation Drze and Sen discuss the problem of
voicelessness in which economic and social inequalities prevent the
underprivileged from participating effectively in democratic institutions, and give[s]
disproportionate power to those who command crucial resources such as income,
education, and influential connections.32 They advocate two ways of overcoming
voicelessness: self-assertion of the underprivileged through political
organization, and solidarity with the underprivileged on the part of other members
of the society, whose interests and commitments are broadly linked, and who are
often better placed to advance the cause of the disadvantaged by virtue of their own
privileges (e.g. formal education, access to the media, economic resources, political
connections).33 They argued that both assertion and solidarity may have intrinsic as
well as instrumental value.
Within the Indian context, solidarity had been the dominant form of organizing,
which had strengths but also weaknesses because the perspectives, motivations and
ideologies of those who spoke on behalf of the illiterate or unemployed or
malnourished might not be entirely congruent with the interests of those whom they
seek to represent.34 And well-meaning but ill-informed solidarity might
successfully advocate unhelpful policies such as the tremendous accumulation of
foodgrain stocks, and the left-wings support for formal sector labour to the utter
neglect of informal workers. Thus solidarity is at once identified as a crucial element
for catalysing effective public outcry, at the same time that its limits are exposed and
the need for simultaneous development of an assertive voice by the deprived is also
stated.
In different texts and settings, Sen regularly argues that more attention needs to
be paid not only to human rights which are tremendously important and require
ongoing enthusiasm but also to what Immanuel Kant called imperfect obligations.
55
These are obligations that are inexactly specified (telling us neither who must
particularly take the initiative, nor how far he should go in doing this general
duty).35 The key feature of imperfect obligations is to draw attention to what one
person owes another person by virtue of his or her humanity. This duty is not
developed in a strictly legal sense with which the duties correlative to human rights
are generally described. It is not specified with reference to a particular person (what
I owe Brenda), nor is the content of the obligation specified (what I must do if
I encounter an old lady being mugged by a strong assailant). Rather, imperfect
obligations are loosely specified duties of others to help a human being who is seen to
have certain rights by virtue of his or her humanity - not citizenship. Sen and Anand call
imperfect obligations general and non-compulsive obligations of those who can
help.36 And those who can help certainly include the various individuals who direct
systems that need to be modified, as well as those who are directly harmed by unjust
systems. Greater attention to imperfect obligations might mean greater legal, public,
and moral attention to these vague sets of duties, with the aim of awakening within
more and more people an awareness of their imperfect obligations presumably
towards the deprived and threatened among others and a willingness to respond.
In a different set of writings these focusing on culture and identity Sen argues
powerfully for our ability to have plural affiliations with different groups including
groups that cross national borders and of the potent effect these affiliations could have
in furthering global justice. How does this argument connect to the topic at hand?
Asked about what the domain of justice should be, Sen answers that to confine the
domain of justice to the nation-state, to citizens bound by the national identity, was too
specific. And yet to universalise the domain of justice to all of humanity was too
idealistic. Instead, Sen argues that our goal should be to extend the domain of justice
beyond our national identity by realising that our sense of affiliation to other people
travels along our other identities of gender, of sports, of religious affiliation,
of political views, of passionate interests. The domain of justice extends when we
recognise our plural affiliation with many identity groups in addition to our nationality.
The assumption here seems to be that the affiliation generates the kind of moral
sensitivities and/or solidarity required for comfortably-off people to advance the wellbeing of the deprived and perhaps to recognise injustice. For example some, such as
John Finnis, argue that fairness is partly accomplished not by rational deliberation
but by a feeling.37 And thus affiliation might, imperfectly, catalyse the feeling
required to recognise situations of injustice and respond to them.
The development of bonds of affiliation could occur among groups in global
civil society as is seen in transnational social movements for example. But such
bonds might also involve persons inside the very institutions which are argued to be
unjust. Thus a further, partial, response to structural injustice would be to enable
those who are in the institutions to be exposed to others, to develop affiliation with
them, and hope that these frail bonds of relationship would be sufficiently tensile to
urge the person(s) to reflect on their institutions from within the Trojan horse, as it
were, and to change those aspects of them that are particularly grievous.
Of course advocating solidarity, the fulfilling of imperfect obligations and
increasing bonds of plural affiliation is a very incomplete way of addressing
structural injustice. It sounds quite fragile and unlikely. In fact, one would hardly
56
SABINA ALKIRE
pause to consider it, were it not the case that so often it appears to be precisely a lack
of fellow-feeling which impedes the further actions that would be required to
redress structural injustice. The following section will, in a non-technical manner,
sketch how these processes might unfold.
STRUCTURAL INJUSTICE AND COLLECTIVE ACTION
The arguments in Drze and Sens Hunger and Public Action, or in Cornia and
Stewarts Structural Adjustment with a Human Face or Stiglitz Globalization and
its Discontents and similar popular writings create an impact by drawing attention to
the deepening of poverty and other social ills that policies caused unnecessarily.
They awaken indignation precisely because they portray institutions as culpably
negligent of (or indifferent to) the human cost of their actions. They do this by
attempting to establish not only the seriousness of the harm, but also the causal
responsibility of the institution for the harm (directly or through negligence) - links
that are often energetically disputed by the accused institution. Finally, they try to
establish that the institution, differently constructed, could undertake constructive
work without these costs (obviously the prior assumption is that the institution is
doing some constructive work).
Thus conceived, an identifying feature of structural injustice is that it
unnecessarily excludes attention to certain capabilities or to the capabilities of a
group of people, and that this exclusion proves detrimental to them they become
famine victims or suffer from hunger and other acute deprivations. Let us call this
group Affected
persons.
But structural injustice can also be analysed in other ways. People whose own
lives are not directly affected by exploitation, human rights abuse, abysmal poverty,
or environmental degradation, may still be affected by these things indirectly. Their
well-being would expand if they had the freedom to live in a world less shadowed
by human pain. This is related to the argument of sympathy, where the wellbeing
of person Y be it ones son or distant strangers, has a direct influence on the
wellbeing of person X. Let us call this group Compassionate bystanders.
Other people may value the capability to work to change such structural
injustices in an informed and effective manner. Given an impending famine, the
ability to be a part of a movement that rolled back the dread of hunger, for example,
could be meaningful and valuable to people, even though it does not directly affect
their well-being and in fact may diminish it in some respects. This is related to what
Adam Smith called commitment which entails the choice of actions which may or
may not expand ones self interest. Of course persons own motivations and precise
goals will always vary both by person and over time. But when the goals intersect
sufficiently on a common purpose, we might call this group Committed activists
be they neighbours or global activists.
Finally, recall that in this very rough account of structural injustice, multiple
agents coordinate joint action, the fruit of which is unjust. In this account some
group of people has the power to affect the institutions and policies in significant
ways if they were so inclined. That is, they have a rather super-charged set of agency
57
freedoms. These may be special interest groups, or they may be leaders of the
organization in question or philanthropists or political leaders. Some ways of
addressing the structural injustice will not be successful unless some or many within
this group change their view, whether their reasons for doing so relate to incentives,
moral sensibilities, or new information. We will call this group Partially decisive
powerbrokers.
A further clarification in this very rough setting of the table is to note the
obvious: the groups are likely to overlap. Person X may be directly impacted by
chronic hunger (Affected person), but also devastated when his child perishes in
infancy (Compassionate bystander). Yet he may still rise to his feet and use all his
strength to mobilize for change so that others in his community do not experience a
similar fate (Committed activist). Or, at the other end of the spectrum, Person T
may be a vice president in an offending institution (Partially decisive powerbroker),
yet be quite committed to using her post to bring about positive change (Committed
activist). She may also occasionally become overtaken by depression about the
damage her institution continues to inflict (Compassionate bystander).
From this set up it is possible to frame a step-wise participatory response to the
capability deprivation among Affected Persons those affected, for example, by
famine or hunger. Recall that in this schema structural injustice is distinct from other
forms of personal injustice because the actor is multiple rather than unitary a firm,
a government, a policy that is made by some and carried out by many others, a
group of vested interests that conspire. Multiple agents frame the actions that,
deliberately or unintentionally, create and sustain an unjust system. Hence the
dubious value of your lecture to the Trojan horse.
If this system of hunger is to be reversed, then multiple agents will need to
recognise a problem, agree, and act to rearrange matters. The persons who are
committed to such action are the Committed activists. Therefore, a first step might
be an effort to recruit members from the Affected persons, the Compassionate
bystanders, or the Partially decisive powerbrokers, who are also simultaneously
sincerely Committed activists. When these activists make their voices heard, the
outcry and reasoned debate might have a further constructive impact on the values
of other Partially decisive powerbrokers, and these persons might, also, become
sincerely Committed activists. This is what Sen calls the self-assertion and
solidarity ways of expanding voice.
At the same time, the Affected persons, the Compassionate bystanders, and
the Committed activists might work to threaten the ongoing existence of person
xs status as a powerbroker by various assertive means (e.g. if x were not re-elected,
x would not be able to enjoy the present super-charged capabilities). Thus unless
person x acts as iff she or he is also a Committed activist, her status as a
powerbroker is in danger. In this way, the group of persons who act as iff they are
Committed activists (whether sincerely or because their status as powerbrokers
depends upon it) might increase, and thus the likelihood of adequate responses by
the drivers of the Trojan horse might increase correspondingly. Of course there are
many further complications, yet this might be one way of interpreting the
contribution that collective action can make to combating structural injustice.
58
SABINA ALKIRE
CONCLUSION: THE EMBEDDED COLLECTIVE ACTION PROBLEM
This chapter has sketched the trajectory of Sens writings on public responses to
structural injustice. It is a very heartening and empowering framework. Indeed, it is
also a call to action. As the main points were summarized at the beginning, I will not
do so again.
Rather, I would like to conclude by re-examining the coordination problem
within the Trojan horse that was raised in the introduction. For the trajectory just
sketched left the multiple, Partially decisive powerbrokers, as it were, still inside
the dark beast, with a goodly number of them more committed to confronting
structural injustice (for various reasons) than they were before.
Is this sufficient? For is it not the case that quite often many employees of an
unjust institution do indeed see the wrong that is about them, and are distressed by
it? They already have the bonds of affiliation tugging away, and would work as
Committed activists if it were clear what to do. So why do various structural
injustices persist?
It would seem that in the case of structural injustice, a further question to explore
is how multiple agents justify inaction. At some times it might indeed be a lack of
knowledge about the consequences of their actions to all parties involved a lack
of knowledge that public action could redress. At other times, even with full
knowledge of these consequences, the moral sensibilities are not awakened, perhaps
because the person does not have bonds of affiliation, or understand how they
are imperfectly obligated to respond to others. Here too, we have something
to suggest. Yet still other times inaction seems to arise among very committed
agents by a sense of disempowered fatalism, because joint coordinated action
would be required in order to bring about systemic change, but they do not know
who else would be willing to undertake this with them, or because the tradition of
their community does not support this mode of action. Any single agent might
excuse their inaction on many grounds but the perceived disinterest of their
colleagues and peers often ranks first among reasons.
Put differently, even if many or even all of the powerbrokers also became
Committed activists, this would not necessarily solve the problem. Many
structural injustices are widely and publicly recognised (environmental issues,
institutional inefficiencies or inertia to name a few). But people including amiable
staff of these institutions (which might include the World Bank or the United
Nations) feel powerless to effect change. The system or institution seems too big
to respond to the actions of even a large and powerful subset of powerbrokers, or
they are not sure of what an adequate set of responses would be, or lack the
confidence that they can change their institution, or do not know how to organize
themselves as committed powerbrokers after they have identified one another.
Sens work addresses one collective action problem, namely the problem of how
affected groups, bystanders, and Committed activists can recruit the commitment
of powerbrokers to address the injustice. He argues that they can, and that they must,
and identifies several ways of proceeding. However even if successful, it leaves
unaddressed a further collective action problem embedded in current institutional
arrangements. This problem is how to activate committed
d powerbrokers to use their
59
agency freedoms to galvanize actions that redress structural injustice, as they may
wish to do.
Sabina Alkire is Research Associate at the Centre for Global Equity Initiative,
Harvard University, USA.
NOTES
1
Sen, 1999c.
Fromm, 1949: 248.
3
Gore, 1997; Stewart and Deneulin, 2002; Robeyns, 2004.
4
Sen, 2001b.
5
6
Sens work on famine in particular is found in Sen, 1980, 1981a,b, 1991a. For other work see for
example Devereux, 2001; De Waal, 2004; Drze and Sen, 2002.
7
Sen, 1999b, 16.
8
Drze and Sen, 1989: 5-6.
9
Drze and Sen, 1990; Sen, 1981b.
10
11
Sen, 1981b: 43.
12
Drze and Sen, 1989: 257-8.
13
Ibid.: 18.
14
The book uses the term public action to encompass action by the state as well as action undertaken by
the public-at-large, including adversarial protests, informed criticisms, and political demands.
15
Ibid.: 263.
16
Ibid.: 15. For Sens other work on hunger see for example Sen 1982c,d, 1986; 1989, 1990b, 1994b,
2001b.
17
18
Ibid.: 279.
199
Drze and Sen, 2002. The book is an update of the previous volume entitled India: Economic
Development and Social Opportunity published in 1995. The title change suggests, accurately, a further
emphasis on public participation in the revised volume.
20
Ibid.: 347.
21
Ibid.: 353.
22
Ibid.: 353ff. See also pages 8-9, 28-32.
23
Ibid.: 6.
24
Ibid.: 358ff.
25
I have tried to summarize some of these in Alkire, 2002: chapter 4. See Sen, 2002: chapters 19-21.
26
Quoted in Drze and Sen, 2002: 375.
27
See also Alkire, 2002: chapter 4.
288
Sen, 1992a: 51. See also Sen, 1982a,b,c, 1983, 1985a,b, 1988, 1990a, 1991, 1992b, 1993, 1994a,c,
1995a,b, 1996, 1997, 1998a,b,c, 1999a,b,c, 2001a.
29
Drze and Sen, 1995: 106. See also Drze and Sen, 2002: 9: The ability of people to participate in
social decisions has been seen, particularly since the French revolution, as a valuable characteristic of a
good society.
300
Sen, 1999a: 10. See also Drze and Sen, 2002: 10: Participation also plays a crucial role in the
formation of values and in generating social understanding.
31
Sen, 1999a: 11.
32
33
Ibid.: 29.
34
Ibid.: 30.
2
60
SABINA ALKIRE
35
Sen, 2000: 495; Sen, 1999: 230. ONeill discusses the Kantian notion of perfect/imperfect obligations
extensively, but reaches somewhat different conclusions (that the term virtue should be used rather than
imperfect obligation). See ONeill, 1996.
36
UNDP, 2000.
37
Finnis, 1992: 49.
REFERENCES
Alkire, Sabina (2002), Valuing Freedoms: Sens Capability Approach and Poverty Reduction, Oxford:
Cornia, Giovanni, Richard Jolly, and Frances Stewart (1988), Adjustment with a Human Face, Oxford:
Clarendon Press
De Waal, Alex (2004), Famine that Kills, 3rdd Edition, Oxford: Clarendon Press
Devereux, Stephen (2001), Sens Entitlement Approach: Critiques and Counter-Critiques, Oxford
Journal of Development Studies, 29: 245-263
Drze, Jean and Amartya Sen (1989), Hunger and Public Action, Oxford: Clarendon Press
_______ and Amartya Sen, eds (1990), The Political Economy of Hunger, Oxford: Clarendon Press
_______ and Amartya Sen (1995), India: Economic Development and Social Opportunity, Oxford:
Clarendon Press
_______ (2002), India: Development and Participation, Oxford: Oxford University Press
Finnis, John (1992), Natural Law and Legal Reasoning, in R. George, ed., Natural Law Theory:
Contemporary Essays, Oxford: Clarendon Press
Fromm, Erich (1949), Man for Himself: An Enquiry into the Psychology of Ethics, London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul
Gore, Charles (1997), Irreducibly Social Goods and the Informational Basis of Amartya Sens Capability
Approach, Journal of International Development 9: 235-250
ONeill, Onora (1996), Towards Justice and Virtue: A Constructive Account of Practical Reasoning,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Robeyns, Ingrid (2004), Sens Capability Approach and Feminist Concerns, Mimeograph, University
of Amsterdam
Sen, Amartya (1980), Famines, World Developmentt 8: 613-21
_______ (1981a), Ingredients of Famine Analysis: Availability and Entitlements, Quarterly Journal of
Economics, 96: 433-464
_______ (1981b), Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation, Oxford: Clarendon
Press
_______ (1982a), Liberty as Control: An Appraisal, Midwest Studies in Philosophyy 7: 207-221
_______ (1982b), Rights and Agency, Philosophy and Public Affairs, 11: 5-29
_______ (1982c), The Food Problem: Theory and Policy, Third World Quarterly 4: 447-59
_______ (1982d), The Right Not To Be Hungry, in G Floistad, ed., Contemporary Philosophy, The
Hague: Martinus Nijhoff
_______ (1983), Liberty and Social Choice, The Journal of Philosophy, 80: 5-28
_______ (1985a), Well-Being Agency and Freedom: The Dewey Lectures 1984, Journal of Philosophy,
82: 169-221
_______ (1985b), Commodities and Capabilities, Amsterdam: Elsevier
_______ (1986), Food, Economics and Entitlements, WIDER Working Papers
_______ (1988), Freedom of Choice, European Economic Review 32: 269-294
_______ (1989), Food and Freedom, World Development 17: 769-81
_______ (1990a), Justice: Means versus Freedoms, Philosophy & Public Affairs 19: 107-121
_______ (1990b), Public Action to Remedy Hunger, Arturo Tanco Lecture delivered 2 August 1990 at
Queen Elizabeth II Conference centre, London: The Global Hunger Project
_______ (1991a), Wars and Famines: On Divisions and Incentives, Suntory-Toyota International
Centre Discussion Paper No. 33. London School of Economics Development Economics Research
Program, 1991
_______ (1991), Welfare, Preference and Freedom, Journal of Econometrics 50: 15-29
d Oxford Clarendon Press
_______ (1992a), Inequality Re-Examined,
61
_______ (1992b), Minimal Liberty, Economica 59: 139-59

_______ (1993), Markets and Freedoms: Achievements and Limitations of the Market Mechanism in
Promoting Individual Freedoms, Oxford Economic Papers 45: 519-541
_______ (1994a), Markets and the Freedom to Choose, in H. Siebert, ed., The Ethical Foundations of
the Market. Tbingen: Mohr
_______ (1994b), Population and Reasoned Agency: Food, Fertility, and Economic Development, in
K. Lindahl-Kiessling and H. Landberg, eds., Population, Economic Development, and the
Environment, Oxford: Oxford University Press
_______ (1994c), The Formulation of Rational Choice, AEA Papers and Proceedings 84: 385-390
_______ (1995a), Agency and Well-being: The Development Agenda, N. Heyzer, S Kapoor and J
Sandler, eds., A Commitment to the Worlds Women: Perspectives on Development for Beijing and
Beyond,
d New York: UNIFEM
_______(1995b), Rationality and Social Choice, American Economic Review 85: 1-24
_______ (1996), Freedom, Capabilities and Public Action: A Response, Politeia 12: 107-125
_______ (1997), Maximization and the Act of Choice, Econometrica 65: 745-779
_______
__ (1998a), Economic Policy and Equity: An Overview, Prepared for Conference on Economic
Policy and Equity, IMF, June 8-9
______ (1998b), Individual Freedom: Basis for a Social Commitment, EExcerpt from the address
delivered at the award ceremony for the Giovanni Agnelli International Prize October 16
______ (1998c), The Possibility of Social Choice, American Economic Review 89: 349-78
_______ (1999a), Democracy as a Universal Value, Journal of Democracyy 10: 3-17
_______ (1999b), Development As Freedom, New York: Knopf Press
_______ (1999c), Global Justice: Beyond International Equity, in I. Kaul, I. Grunberg and M. A. Stern,
eds, Global Public Goods: International Cooperation in the 21stt Century, Oxford University Press
_______ (2000), Consequential Evaluation and Practical Reason, Journal of Philosophy 97: 477-502
_______ (2001a), Economic development and capability expansion in historical perspective, Pacific
Economic Review
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_______ (2001b), Old Torments New Blunders, The Little Magazine
_______ (2002), Rationality and Freedom, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
Stewart, Frances and Sverine Deneulin (2002), Amartya Sens Contribution to Development Thinking,
Studies in Comparative International Development 37: 61-70
Stiglitz, Joseph (2002), Globalization and its Discontents, New-York: W.W. Norton
UNDP (2000), Human Development Report: Background Papers, New-York: Oxford University Press
CHAPTER 4
NICHOLAS SAGOVSKY
CAPABLE INDIVIDUALS AND JUST INSTITUTIONS

Sen and Rawls
INTRODUCTION
One of the strengths of Sens capability approach is that it provides a means of
assessing the effectiveness of economic and political systems in promoting human
flourishing. In providing a theoretical basis for measures of human flourishing, Sen
also provides a perspective from which there can be critique of the economic and
political systems in which human beings realise or fail to realise their capabilities.
In this chapter I shall argue that Sens focus on individual human flourishing is
supported by a less than adequate account of social flourishing, and that his thought
can fruitfully be complemented by that of thinkers for whom the social matrix of
individual human flourishing is something to be considered and assessed in its own
right. To this end, I wish to bring Sens thought into dialogue with that of John
Rawls, whom Sen has himself called the foremost moral philosopher of our own
time,1 and to suggest it would be helpful to think in terms not only of an
individuals capability set but also of social capability. Whilst arguing that Sen
helps us identify some weaknesses in Rawls thought, I wish to suggest that Rawls
abiding concern for just institutions raises important questions which Sen does not
face.
SEN AND THE SOCIAL: A PRELIMINARY VIEW
It is not my purpose here to review Sens capability approach in detail.2 My purpose
is to ask in a preliminary way what presuppositions about social realities lie behind
his capability approach.
Development as Freedom is a key text for Sens approach to this issue.3 This is
because his subject in that book is not individual flourishing but the development
of societies. Nevertheless, the ultimate test of development for Sen remains the
effective freedoms that individuals enjoy:
Societal arrangements, involving many institutions (the state, the market, the legal
system, political parties, the media, public interest groups and public discussion forums,
among others) are investigated in terms of their contribution to enhancing and
63
64
NICHOLAS SAGOVSKY
guaranteeing the substantive freedoms of individuals, seen as active agents of change,
rather than as passive recipients of dispensed benefits.4
Again and again Sen returns to the dialectic between the individual and the social:
Individual freedom is quintessentially a social product, and there is a two-way relation
between (1) social arrangements to expand individual freedoms and (2) the use of
individual freedoms not only to improve the respective lives but also to make the social
arrangements more appropriate and effective. Also, individual conceptions of justice
and propriety, which influence the specific uses that individuals make of their freedoms,
depend on social associations particularly on the interactive formation of public
perceptions and on collaborative comprehension of problems and remedies. The
analysis and assessment of public policies have to be sensitive to these diverse
connections.5
Sen speaks of the state and of society having extensive roles in strengthening and
safeguarding human capabilities6 but not so forcefully of human capabilities having
an extensive role in the service of society or the common good.
However, Sens concluding chapter is entitled Individual Freedom as a Social
Commitment. He argues that in looking for a fuller understanding of human
capabilities we have to take note of 1) their direct relevance to the well-being and
freedom of people; 2) their indirect role through influencing sociall change; and 3)
their indirect role through influencing economic production.7 For our purpose here,
the second (which he calls an indirect role reinforcing his primary concern with
the capabilities of individuals) is obviously the key area. Nevertheless, Sen is clearly
aware of ways in which a social situation about which the individual can do very
little or nothing may enhance or diminish human capabilities. In citing the example
of the dramatic reduction in mortality in the UK during the two war decades of the
twentieth century, he accepts that the explanation of the rapid increase in British life
expectancy is provided by the changes in the extent of social sharing during the war
decades, and the sharp increases in public support for social services (including
nutritional support and health care) that went with this.8 Regrettably, he never
discusses what there is to be learnt, in terms of social motivation, from the study of
war and the preparation for war as a (disastrous) instrument of economic
development - presumably because the use of war, which always has a harmful
effect on human freedoms overall, as an instrument of policy has characteristically
been the prerogative of dictatorships rather than liberal democracies. Sen does,
however, discuss the Mafia in roughly similar terms, arguing that there are social
functions that an organization like the Mafia can perform in relatively primitive
parts of the economy, in supporting mutually beneficial transactions.9 In a
circumscribed way (and in a way not dissimilar to a dictatorship), a criminal
organisation like the Mafia can enforce the mutual trust (a key social value) upon
which economic enterprise depends. The social value of trust is, however, much
more securely founded where trust is cultivated within a democratic polity. Sen
frequently returns to the relationship between participatory democracy and social
flourishing arguing often that famines do not occur where democratic governments
are in charge.10
65
Though a convinced believer in market mechanisms as the best engine for

promoting development, Sen readily draws attention to the challenges faced by a
capitalist world-order:
The big challenges that capitalism now faces in the contemporary world include issues
of inequality (especially that of grinding poverty in a world of unprecedented
prosperity) and of public goods (that is, goods that people share together, such as the
environment). The solution to these problems will almost certainly call for institutions
that take us beyond the capitalist market economy. The compatibility of the market
mechanism with a wide range of values is an important question, and it has to be faced
along with exploring the extension of institutional arrangements beyond the limits of the
pure market mechanism.11
In this one paragraph Sen raises three of the issues which are central to the
discussion in this essay: grinding poverty and inequality of wealth; public goods;
and the institutional arrangements necessary to address the challenges he
identifies. For Sen, these are questions which must be faced in the quest for the
development of the most extensive possible human capabilities (that is the greatest
possible human freedoms). We have seen that he does not at all neglect social issues
but he always approaches them as subsidiary to individual human flourishing. For
this reason, I wish to bring his thought into dialogue with that of a similarly liberal
thinker for whom, like Sen, a thoroughgoing understanding of freedom is central to
his account of human flourishing, but whose starting point is the inalienably social
matrix of individual well-being.
RAWLS, THE ORGINAL POSITION AND THE TWO PRINCIPLES OF
JUSTICE
We turn, then, to John Rawls as a liberal thinker, who, like Sen, stresses the primacy
of human freedom in human well-being, but who never deviates from a central
focus on justice. By looking closely at the approach of Rawls (from which Sen
distances himself somewhat)12 we can see more closely where our critique of Sens
capability approach may be telling. The importance of Rawls, for our purpose, is
that, single-handed, he revived the connection of liberal ethical theory with the
social contract tradition of thought about social justice, which it had in effect
abandoned. Where the social contract tradition has collapsed under the pressures
of history (there was said historically to be no such social contract) and
Darwinism (such a social contract would be positively harmful to the species, since
the species thrives on competition), Rawls reengaged with it as the transcendental
condition of a truly inclusive, participatory society in which people experience both
freedom and equality. He argued that society is not merely the coming-together of
self-interested individuals for mutual advantage, but that there is a deeper
bondedness about social coexistence. Rawls reconstruction of a theoretical
account of justice in the social contract tradition, against the dominant utilitarianism,
proved so successful that it continues to permeate discussion in social philosophy,
politics, social policy, in all the fields concerned with the practice of justice.
Rawls is concerned with a society that is fair and with rules of social
functioning that will ensure it remains fair. To get at such rules, he employs a
66
NICHOLAS SAGOVSKY
heuristic device which he calls a thought-experiment for the purpose of public- and
self-clarification:13 he asks his readers to imagine a situation in which the social
actors are placed behind a veil of ignorance. Behind the veil, the social actors are
the same but they are not identified by and are ignorant of the social characteristics
that make them recognisable to each other or themselves: whether they are male or
female, black or white, rich or poor, and so on. They know that such characteristics
exist in actual functioning societies, but they do not know which they themselves
possess. In this situation which Rawls calls the original position they are to
consider what social rules they would employ to ensure a society that is fair to all.
Somewhat misleadingly, Rawls hypothesises about what people would do in
this situation. The point is, though, that these are not people they are prepeople but with all the sensitivities and vulnerabilities of real people, because they
know that the real world confers advantage and imposes disadvantage all the time.
Rawls device is used to strip them of the ability people have to calculate their own
advantage in any situation. They must allow for the possibility that in the real world
they will be amongst the most disadvantaged. In this way, Rawls considers that he
blocks the possibility of a utilitarian calculus in which an individual might be
permanently disadvantaged by others (as slaves are) or even sacrificed for the needs
of the whole group. He supposes that in the original position (which is an ideal
or transcendental social position), since the social actors would be fully aware that
they might be the inheritors of social disadvantage, they would want, as rational
human beings, to ensure provision for their full social inclusion, whatever might be
their disadvantage through the accidents of their birth. To achieve this, they will be
prepared provisionally to adopt what Nagel later called the view from nowhere.14
On the basis of these considerations, Rawls offers two fundamental principles of
justice. These he presented, as he worked on them, in slightly different forms. Here I
follow the way he introduced them in A Theory of Justice.15 First, he argued that
Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive scheme of equal basic
liberties compatible with a similar scheme of liberties for others. This is what he
focuses on when he talks of justice as fairness. As a liberal, he is concerned with
individual freedom. His starting point is the need for the maximisation of specific
freedoms in the real world. Central to his notion of justice, however, is not only
freedom, but equality, understood in terms of civil and political rights. Each person
in society is to have an equal right to fundamental freedoms (whether or not they
exercise that right for example, a person who chooses to be a soldier or a
policeman might thereby properly and necessarily forego the right to strike, even in
normal, peacetime conditions. Rawls would see no injustice in this, provided the
initial commitment were a matter of free choice.) Buried within this first principle is
also a recognition that basic liberties are bound to clash, so there must be a means
of arbitrating between them. There must be a functioning system of law that will
defend the right of people to equal basic liberties, and will moderate between their
liberties when they clash or are infringed.
Rawls makes it clear that his two principles of justice are presented in lexical
order. That is to say, the first principle takes precedence over the second. The first
concern of a society which is permeated by the virtue of justice is a concern for the
67
basic liberties of its citizens. There is to be no (utilitarian) sacrifice of these for the
sake of the wider, or the future, good.
Rawls second (and subordinate) principle of justice is that social and economic
inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both (a) reasonably expected to be to
everyones advantage, and (b) attached to positions and offices open to all. This is
what he calls the principle of fair equality of opportunity. The important thing to
see here is that it is not the most extensive equality of opportunity (the equality that
Rawls concentrates on is in the realm of civil and political rights) but fairr equality of
opportunity that is in view. Rawls recognises that to give people a fair chance there
will have to be interventionist measures to ensure they compete on appropriately
level terms, something that would produce an inhibition of freedom. This he is only
prepared to countenance within certain limits. He is not prepared absolutely to
restrict the freedom of the advantaged in order to ensure equality with the
disadvantaged. He is only prepared to say that further advantages enjoyed by the
advantaged must be to the benefit (not the detriment) of the disadvantaged. Thus, if
a firm pays a high salary to attract a brilliant Managing Director and all the low-paid
workers then benefit from the firms growth in prosperity, it is not unjust to pay a
high salary, or a bonus, to the Managing Director.
If Rawls prescription were followed, it would mean that the justice of any
increase in social advantage would always have to be assessed by its impact on the
least advantaged. This is ensured by the way Rawls specifies the outcome of the
deliberation in the original position. Since each participant has not only to allow for
the possibility, but to reason from the possibility, that they could be among the least
advantaged socially, they are bound to construct the principles of justice in a
radically inclusive way. Rawls himself varies in the stringency with which he
emphasises the necessary benefit to the least advantaged from talking in terms of
minimal advantage to greatest expected benefit. At times he also records his
opposition to excessive social and economic inequalities, though he does not
specify when such inequalities become excessive.16
Just as Rawls does not investigate how much social and economic inequality is
in itself socially damaging, so he did not in his first formulation of the Theory of
Justice investigate with sufficient precision what it means to say that each person is
to have an equal right to the most extensive scheme of equal basic liberties
practically possible. When he returned to the subject in Political Liberalism, he
changed the formulation of his first principle of justice to: Each person has an equal
right to a fully adequate scheme of equal basic liberties which is compatible with a
similar scheme of liberties for all.17 The equal basic liberties he has in mind are
specified as: freedom of thought and liberty of conscience; the political liberties and
freedom of association; the freedoms specified by the liberty and integrity of the
person; the rights and liberties covered by the rule of law. Rawls makes the point
that it is not liberty as such which has the pre-eminent value but certain specified
liberties. In this he differs from Sen for whom liberty has an intrinsic value,18 and for
whom Rawls concentration on civil and political liberties is inadequate19 but they
are very much at one in their concern for effective freedoms, or capabilities.
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NICHOLAS SAGOVSKY
Rawls shows a similar concern in discussing how it may be that basic liberties
are not merely formal: he affirms that in a society which respects justice as fairness
the basic liberties are inviolable and equal for each citizen but, nonetheless, the
greater wealth and position some have is bound to increase the worth or usefulness
of their liberties to them. This is where his second principle comes into play: The
basic structure of society is arranged so that it maximises the primary goods
available to the least advantaged to make use of the equal basic liberties enjoyed by
everyone. This defines one of the central aims of political and social justice. []
The idea is to combine the equal basic liberties with a principle for regulating certain
primary goods viewed as all-purpose means for advancing our ends.20 Typically, he
writes of a decent distribution of income and wealth, going on, All citizens must
be assured the all-purpose means necessary for them to take intelligent and effective
advantage of their basic freedoms.21 In A Theory of Justice, Rawls unequivocally
accepts but he does not pursue the point that the exercise of civil and political
liberties depends upon adequate social and economic provision:
Below a certain level of material and social well-being, and of training and education,
people simply cannot take part in society as citizens, much less as equal citizens. What
determines the level of well-being and education below which this happens is not for a
political conception to say. One must look to the society in question. 22
Clearly, the consistent exercise of civil rights depends upon a persons having
sufficient water, sufficient food, good enough health, education, access to child care,
adequate income to meet such needs and to ensure social participation. These are all
conditions of the enjoyment of the most extensive scheme of basic liberties and of
fair equality of opportunity. When discussing the maximising of liberty, Rawls
warms to Sens approach in terms of human capabilities:23 he shares Sens
concern for the making effective of political and civil liberties by means of adequate
economic and social provision. This line of thinking has been still more fully
developed by neo-Aristotelian thinkers like Martha Nussbaum who tend to be much
more prescriptive in their descriptions of the physical requisites for human
flourishing.24
The form in which I have stated Rawls principles of justice is, as I have said, the
form in which he introduces them in A Theory of Justice. There is a kind of comic
navet in the way he says that social and economic inequalities are to be arranged
as though they were not the product of the fiercest competitive deployment of
social power. Rawls limp way of putting the point doubtless comes about because
he does not want to be politically prescriptive about how the principles of justice are
to be realised. Since he is here setting firm limits on inequalities, he is only too
aware that he is opening up an avenue for active government moderation of the
competition within the free market, moderation which he clearly regards as
necessary to serve the interests of justice. The practical question he leaves is how to
ensure open processes of competition which are nevertheless properly moderated in
the interests of fair equality of opportunity. Part of the answer for Rawls lies in the
creation of a supportive political culture in which the goals and practice of justice
are inculcated, so that there is sufficient popular and institutional support for the
legislative and executive action that measures in support of justice would entail. The
69
questions raised by the practice of justice are difficult enough to address in a single
constitutional democracy, but they become infinitely more complicated when looked
at in the light of the taxation demands, the labour law and other welfare legislation,
and the expenditure on education which would be necessary to implement Rawls
principles of justice, and then of the competition between societies, not all of which
acknowledge the principles of constitutional democracy.
RAWLS, PRIMARY GOODS AND CAPABILITIES
Rawls makes it very clear that his primary concern is with the working of social
institutions. Nevertheless, these institutions are not, in his view, there to serve
inherited or traditional social goals. They are there to be subsidiary to the goals
consciously identified by human beings as valuable to themselves. At this point he
draws very close to the understanding of capabilities developed by Sen25 and still
closer, when, in Political Liberalism, he makes it clear that he is seeking a
prescription for a cohesive but plural society in which its members espouse various
and differing notions of the good.
Whereas Sen develops his account of human flourishing in terms of
capabilities, Rawls speaks of primary goods. These he defines as things which
it is supposed a rational man wants whatever else he wants, adding, with more of
these goods men can generally be assured of greater success in carrying out their
intentions and in advancing their ends, whatever these ends may be. The primary
social goods, to give them in broad categories, are rights, liberties, and
opportunities, and income and wealth.26 Rawls explains that these are sociall goods
because they are connected with the basic structure of society, since liberties and
opportunities are defined by the rules of major institutions and the distribution of
income and wealth is regulated by them.27 The similarity with Sen lies in Rawls
emphasis on liberties and opportunities rights, liberties, income and wealth
being only of use when accompanied by (Sen would say converted into, but Rawls
is less specific) opportunities. The dissimilarity lies in Rawls emphasis upon these
as primary sociall goods and their relation to the basic structure of society, which
is the real focus of his theory of justice.
When Rawls makes explicit his underlying theory of the good, his emphasis
varies somewhat from that of Sen. Rawls has in mind the type of the rational man.
For him, the good is the satisfaction of rational desire.28 Just as the norms for
justice worked out in the original position are supposed to be the product of rational
reflection in a hypothetical situation, so Rawls imagines that the goals espoused by
individuals within their real situation will be the product of similarly rational
reflection. Sen is not so clear about this. For him, the doings and beings that
people value are the product of the rational choices they make in their situation, but
Sen does not follow through with an ethical critique of the rationality of these
choices.29 Where the emphasis of Rawls is more upon the reasonable nature of the
choices people make, for Sen it is more upon their effective freedom to choose and
to implement the goals that they freely espouse.
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NICHOLAS SAGOVSKY
Both Rawls and Sen are concerned with effective liberty.30 Both recognise that
the freedom to enjoy primary goods is empty unless there is a real opportunity to
convert that freedom into well-being. This is precisely why Sens preferred term is
capabilities rather than, say, freedoms or rights. For Rawls, who makes equal
liberty his first principle of justice, it is vital to consider the worth of liberty to the
least advantaged: Liberty and the worth of liberty are distinguished as follows:
liberty is represented by the complete system of the liberties of equal citizenship,
while the worth of liberty to persons and groups depends upon their capacity to
advance their ends within the framework the system defines.31 Rawls addresses the
problem of the inequality of the capacity that people have to realise the worth of
liberty (Sen would say inequality of capability) by applying his second principle of
justice: The basic structure is to be arranged to maximise the worth to the least
advantaged of the complete scheme of equal liberty shared by all. This defines the
end of social justice.32 Thus the struggle for social justice comes down to a critique
of the functioning of the basic structure. Though Rawls attempted in his later work
to take into his thinking non-democratic politics,33 both he and Sen are agreed that
the best (indeed, the only) vehicle for realising their respective notions of justice and
freedom is a participatory democracy.
RAWLS AND THE BASIC STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY
Rawls makes it very clear that his concern is with social justice. This is an important
point to note because the dominant concern for many liberal thinkers is with the
rights or well-being of the individual. Rawls follows social contract thinkers in
asking what social conditions are needed to undergird and promote the liberty of
individuals. So, very early in the Theory of Justice, he writes:
For us the primary subject of justice is the basic structure of society, or more exactly,
the way in which the major social institutions distribute fundamental rights and duties
and determine the division of advantages from social cooperation. By major institutions
I understand the political constitution and the principal economic and social
arrangements. Thus the legal protection of freedom of thought and liberty of
conscience, competitive markets, private property in the means of production, and the
monogamous family are examples of major social institutions. Taken together as one
scheme, the major institutions define mens rights and duties and influence their lifeprospects, what they can expect to be and how well they can hope to do. The basic
structure is the primary subject of justice because its effects are so profound and present
from the start.34
Social justice is, thus, for Rawls, a criterion of the distribution of what he later calls
the primary goods of society. The means of such distribution are the major
institutions in society, and justice is the criterion of the way in which the legal
protection of the freedom of thought and liberty of conscience, competitive markets,
private property in the means of production, and the monogamous family and other
such social institutions operate both singly and together in the distribution of
primary goods. The way in which they operate together (taken together as one
scheme) Rawls calls the basic structure of society.
It is this that Rawls says he is concerned with. He stresses that he does not intend
to consider the justice of institutions and social practices generally; what he wants
71
to do is to formulate a reasonable conception of justice for the basic structure of

society conceived for the time being as a closed system isolated from other
societies. In Justice as Fairness, he offers a definition of the basic structure of
society as the way in which the main political and social institutions of society fit
together into one system of social cooperation, and the way they assign basic rights
and duties and regulate the division of advantages that arises from social cooperation
over time.35 But in what sense can they be said to be one scheme or to fit
together in one scheme of social cooperation? We have seen that this is a crucial
area: just as the mechanism driving the processes of evolution has been discovered
to be a merciless struggle for survival, so even within a well-ordered society, the
order is produced as the product of continuing power-struggles. Into such powerstruggles provided both the procedure and the outcome meet the criteria of justice
Rawls so carefully expounds he does not delve. In this he proves a thoroughgoing
liberal: his is no a priori theory of justice which rests on preexistent assumptions
about the nature of the good.
Rawls is a hugely disciplined thinker: he delivers only what he says he will
deliver which is a theory of justice, not a critique of social institutions. If we have a
conception of justice, he argues, we can then develop a critique of social institutions
(as we see Sen doing when he develops a critique of the market, human rights or
culture in Development as Freedom).36 The problem Rawls is concerned with is,
in the first place, conceptual: from where should we get the concept of justice
against which we measure the basic structure of a society? His answer is, as we
have seen, based on the heuristic device of the original position from which the
principles of justice can be derived. This is in no sense an historical account: it
leaves the role of history (and, more pertinently, of tradition) in the derivation of
notions of justice virtually unexplored.
In the early pages of Political Liberalism, Rawls makes it very clear that his
conception of justice is political not metaphysical. By this he means that he is not
interested in any transcendent account of the Good, and still less in any
identification of the Good with Justice, but rather with the procedural rules of justice
in a plural society. He came to realise, after writing A Theory of Justice, that what
was needed was an account of justice which could be related to the basic structure
of a society in which there were various and even competing notions of the Good.
This is why, in Political Liberalism, he turned his attention to the institutional
framework of a plural society.37 Rawls stated goal remained that of using his
concept of justice as a criterion for his critique of the way the basic structure of
society impinges on peoples lives. It is a critique at this level, not a critique of any
particular social institution, which would, he claimed, allow him to say whether
a particular society is just or unjust in its social relations. He gives the
illuminating example of the purchase and sale of landed property and its
transmission by bequest over several generations. Rawls suggests it is not reasonable
to expect individuals to adjust their bequests in the light of what they judge to be the
effect of the totality of bequests on the next generation, much less beyond.38 It is
clear that the only practical way to meet the demand for justice in the inheritance of
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NICHOLAS SAGOVSKY
property is for the state to have an appropriately redistributive inheritance tax, one
which would be spent on increasing access to a range of primary goods health
care, education, training, minimum incomes and so on which would enable the
most disadvantaged to be less disadvantaged not just in their enjoyment of property
but in a range of necessary basic liberties (or capabilities). In devising procedures
for inheritance tax, the aspiration of the state as a whole, and not of individual
citizens, would be vital.
Rawls goes on to discuss how the basic structure affects individuals,
identifying how it shapes the way the social system produces and reproduces over
time a certain form of culture shared by persons with certain conceptions of their
good.39 All the members of society have certain natural capacities but the making
effective of these (the turning of them into what Sen would call capabilities)
depends upon social attitudes of encouragement and support and the institutions
concerned with their training and use. Rawls concludes that, Not only our final
ends and hopes for ourselves but also our realized abilities and talents reflect, to a
large degree, our personal history, opportunities, and social position.40 The critique
of the social influence over personal history, opportunities and position is precisely
the province of justice. Rawls is very clear that the basic structure of a society can
be more or less unjust in the way it impinges on what Sen would call peoples
capabilities.
RAWLS CITIZENS AND THE PRACTICE OF JUSTICE
Rawls also suggests that the citizens of a well-ordered society (one which pays
attention to the demands of justice) will be aware of these issues and supportive of a
basic structure committed to justice.
He distinguishes between rational persons and reasonable persons. The
rational person, he says, may well be an egoist: What rational agents lack is the
particular form of moral sensibility that underlies the desire to engage in fair
cooperation as such, and to do so on terms that others as equals might reasonably be
expected to endorse.41 For Rawls, human beings are more than egoistic rationalists.
He frequently returns to the importance of the necessary development of a
conception of justice and of a conception of the good in people who are citizens.
His citizens are team-players, who expect to resolve issues fairly by debate and
negotiation with other fair-minded citizens. Rawls is interested in understanding the
contribution made to justice by reasonable persons who exercise their moral
sensibility in the reciprocal social practices of a deliberative democracy. Such
deliberation is for him, crucially, an exercise of practical reason the reason about
which Kant writes in his second Critique and which Aristotle calls phronsis. As
Rawls understands the term, practical reason does not produce tidy argument but
responsible judgement that is judgement which is responsive to the demands of
the situation. Rawls citizens are moral agents who behave justly but their sense of
justice does not go all the way down to some fundamental, comprehensive
conception of the Good. Their sense of justice is formed within the practices and
73
institutions of particular societies in the case that he wishes primarily to consider,

societies that are open and well-ordered liberal democracies.
Rawls gives particular consideration to what he calls the burdens of
judgement.42 This is because he acknowledges that reasonable people, exercising
their judgement responsibly, may yet disagree on controversial issues. How, he asks,
can such disagreement come about? Rawls lists a number of common reasons for
disagreement: the evidence bearing on the case is conflicting and complex, and
therefore hard to assess and evaluate; even where we agree about the kinds of
considerations that are relevant, we may disagree on their relative weight; to some
extent all our concepts are indeterminate and require interpretation; to some extent
the way we assess evidence and weigh moral and political values is shaped by our
total experience, and our total experiences must always differ; often there are
different kinds of normative considerations governing the way we see either side of
an issue and it is difficult to make an overall assessment; and so on. What Rawls is
doing is showing the extent to which in everyday social life we are constantly
exercising our judgement, and the way we exercise our judgement will itself be
conditioned by the norms and values of the society in which we operate. We might
extrapolate to say there is no guarantee that as individuals we are doing this well,
and no way of demonstrating that a citizens social participation truly serves
justice, other than by a demonstration of the socially recognised fittingness and
fruitfulness of such participation. Rawls concern with the good functioning of
societies and with the exercise of practical reason by his citizens shows him to be
closer in spirit to Aristotle than is Sen for whom the enhancement of the
capabilities of individuals is all. Though neither Rawls nor Sen wants to be ethically
prescriptive, of the two it is Rawls who comes closer to developing an account of
citizenship as ethical praxis.
Rawls exploration of the burdens of judgement suffers from what is a
weakness in much of his writing: a lack of specific examples (this is much less true
of The Law of Peoples). In this sense, his writing is consistently theoretical. He
wishes to draw out the principles of justice that properly inform the skilled social
practice of a stable liberal democracy, and not to be too prescriptive about how those
principles should operate in specific societies and situations. However, the lack of
specific examples, the lack of reference to specific historical or dramatic or literary
situations, means that the value of what he has to say is limited, by contrast with,
say, the richly specific writing of Martha Nussbaum or (in some of his works)
Amartya Sen. One is left with the distinct impression that Rawls sees the need for a
hermeneutics of justice that engages with the specifics of tradition and narrative, as
Ricoeur does, but would be uncomfortable undertaking such an exploration. No
matter: he leaves a significant space for citizens to practise responsible judgement
and to engage in responsible action based on such judgement, and he emphasises the
extent to which the practice of justice as a social virtue is an exercise in practical
reason. These are signal commitments in the face of a dominant utilitarianism,
which would not recognise the place of practical reason in the practice of justice,
and in the absence of the rich (thick) description of embedded social skills offered
by forms of neo-Aristotelianism (as in MacIntyre and Nussbaum).
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NICHOLAS SAGOVSKY
RAWLS AND UNJUST INSTITUTIONS
Rawls makes it clear from the beginning of A Theory of Justice that the primary
subject of the principles of social justice is the basic structure of society, that is,
the arrangement of major social institutions into one scheme of cooperation; that
the principles of social justice for social institutions are not the same as those for
individuals; and that the two must be discussed separately.43 He then defines what
he means by an institution: A public system of rules which defines offices and
positions with their rights and duties, powers and immunities, and the like. As
examples of institutions or social practices, he gives: games and rituals, trials and
parliaments, markets and systems of property. He goes on:
An institution may be thought of in two ways: first as an abstract object, that is, as a
possible form of conduct expressed by a system of rules; and second, as a realization in
the thought and conduct of certain persons at a certain time and place of the actions
specified by these rules. There is an ambiguity, then, as to which is just or unjust, the
institution as realized or the institution as an abstract object. It seems best to say that it
is the institution as realized and effectively and impartially administered which is just or
unjust.44
There seems to be some real unclarity here in Rawls thinking about social
institutions. He is surely right to point to an ambiguity as to what is just or unjust:
the institution as realized or the institution as an abstract object. He gives no reason
as to why he opts for the institution as realized or why he adds the rider and
effectively and impartially administered though we have seen above his
unwillingness to develop a critique of specific social institutions. Impartial
administration might indeed be a condition of justice as with, say, a system of
public examinations; but so might partiality if the justice of social action is to be
judged by its effect on the position of the most disadvantaged. The issue is, surely,
between the institution as an abstract object (in itself ) and as realized. Rawls
opts for the institution as realized without further explanation.
It is easy to see how certain institutions as realized may or may not function in
the service of justice as Rawls construes it. A taxation system, a system of trade and
exchange, a public education or health system may or may not promote access to
primary goods by the most disadvantaged. It would not be hard by this criterion to
point to injustices in the system of international trade, or the systems of taxation,
education or health that currently obtain in the UK. It is much harder to see how a
racist political system like that of Apartheid or Nazism (or, indeed a socially
institutionalised game of chance such as a National Lottery) could, on Rawls
criteria, be anything other than intrinsically unjust. The importance of examples like
these is to suggest a moral ontology in social institutions, such that certain
institutions are not amenable to being co-opted in the service of justice;45 if justice is
to be served they must simply be abolished. There are, however, institutions whose
existence is much more ambiguous, and it is here that the issues of structural
transformation are raised most acutely.
An obvious example is those institutions associated with global capitalism (e.g.,
the market in stocks and shares). Only a hard-line Marxist would argue that the
75
accumulation of capital in itself need operate in a way that is contrary to Rawls

principles of justice. For Rawls himself, the accumulation of capital (one form of
primary goods) provides an opportunity for just transactions, that is to say
transactions which benefit the least advantaged. However, when we look at actual
examples of the way capital is deployed in the international world-order, as Julie
Clague does in her examination of biotechnology and patenting issues,46 it is hard
not to argue that intrinsic to the system is a massive bias to the interests of those
persons and places where there are already accumulations of capital. Only where
there is a countervailing redistributive social vision will the issue of genuine
structural transformation be on the agenda at all, and one such countervailing vision
has in Marxism been tried and largely found wanting.
It is at this point that the most serious criticism of Rawls must be pressed. Rawls
presents a moral vision in which reasoning actors pursue rational schemes of
advancement through co-operative action in appropriate institutions (rational
citizens, deliberative democracy, overlapping consensus, the well-ordered
society). This is helpful as an aid to socially transformative action because it
provides access to regulative principles of justice and injustice that might operate in
a plural society. However, it is not possible to derive from these principles a critique
of commodification a critique of what constitutes primary goods. Whether the
system of globalised capitalism that is now almost ubiquitous is unjust in itself or
only as realized, we are coming to see ever more clearly the damage that is being
done especially to the capabilities of the poor by the commodification of
resources like fresh water, forests, and clean air which must be kept as global
commons if they are to continue to be available to meet the needs of the global
poor as well as the global rich. How far, as a matter of justice, this critique should
be pressed, is a political question on which Rawls cannot help us. Nevertheless, not
only must a viable account of justice, it seems, contain principles which govern the
distribution of primary goods as Rawls suggests but it must also contain
principles which defend the conservation of common goods. This would be to go
beyond his own agenda but it seems the obvious way politically to promote what
Sen would see as the capability of drinking clean water or of breathing fresh air. In
the situation of Rawls original position it is highly likely that rational actors,
knowing nothing of their personal situation in life, would defend the interest of the
most disadvantaged (amongst whom they might find themselves) by identifying a
substantial range of common goods.
Rawls, of course, would not be willing to accept any metaphysical notion of
the common good such as is central to Catholic social teaching.47 It is his
presupposition that the very definition of a liberal society lies in there being a
variety of construals of the good. What I would suggest is that even if there can be
no agreement on a substantial notion of the Good based in any kind of metaphysic,
there might well be agreement on the preservation of the physical conditions for
human flourishing as a transcendent and genuinely common Good. A third
principle of justice, to add to Rawls other two would then be specifically
diachronic: that the basic structure of society must not work to the disadvantage of
future generations.48 My own belief is that when we are talking about the survival of
human beingg we have implicitly found a way back to a necessary moral ontology,
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NICHOLAS SAGOVSKY
according to which not just the basic structure of society but human institutions in
themselves can be seen to be just or unjust. Thus, social institutions oriented solely
towards consumption may be seen as intrinsically unjust (because of the way they
disadvantage future generations), and (to use Sens term) a key capability is the
capability of handing on to future generations a world no less rich in basic common
goods than the one inherited from former generations.
CAN THERE BE SOCIAL CAPABILITIES?
To speak of a capability of handing on to future generations a world no less rich in
basic common goods than the one inherited from former generations is to push at
the boundaries of Sens use of the term capability. Sens use of capability is
characteristically individualistic: it refers to those doings and beings an individual
has reason to value. There are, however, doings and beings and there are reasons
which pertain more to a society than an individual and some resources which
pertain only to a society, but to which an individual gets access through membership
of that particular society. Sen talks readily of socially dependent individual
capabilities. He even recognises the possibility of collective capabilities such as
the capability of a world nuclear power to kill the entire population of the world
through nuclear bombing or the capability of humanity as a whole (if it could get
its act together) to cut child mortality.49 Sen also refers to the extensive literature on
social capital in the context of his discussion of the benefits of social cooperation
and of the need for values that complement the working of the market.50 However,
the suggestion I have to make does not fall within any of these domains.
It is clear that Sen believes there are certain goods which are genuinely held in
common and of which the individual makes good or bad use. Such public goods
would include the primary education and health systems in a country, together with
environmental goods such as clean air and clean water. It is, however, not clear to
me quite how far Sen would wish to go in seeing environmental resources as global
commons. For Sen, the key question is always that of the use an individual may
make of such resources to enhance her capability. However, there are other kinds of
common resources of which Sen himself makes extensive use, but which he does not
spotlight in the same way. I refer to the narratives, myths and cultural practices to
which he makes frequent reference throughout his writings.
In Sens recent writing on India this indebtedness is particularly clear. The key
theme of his essay The Argumentative Indian is the way in which the varied
traditions of India have provided a basis for the tradition of argument which
undergirds the practice of democracy. So he writes:
Does the richness of the tradition of argument make much difference to subcontinental
lives today? I would argue it does, and in a great many different ways. It shapes our
social world and the nature of our culture. It deeply influences Indian politics, and
is particularly relevant, I would argue, to the development of democracy in India and
the emergence of its secular priorities.51
77
Here Sen engages with the way in which a tradition shapes a social world and
a culture, and goes on to give examples of texts which have this transformative
power. For instance, he refers to the question of Maitreyee in the Sanskrit text
Brihadaranyaka Upanishad: What should I do with that by which I do not become
immortal?, which he says was useful for me to motivate and explain an
understanding of development that is not parasitic on judging development by the
growth of GNP or GDP.52 Here he acknowledges the motivational power of a
question that comes from a text. Throughout this essay, he shows how texts can be
taken not to close but to open up arguments. He acknowledges that others will read
the texts to which he refers differently, but he in turn makes a well-argued claim to
read, say, Hindu classics as supporting a dialogic culture.
It is striking how many of the texts which Sen uses in this way are religious
classics. Sen never gives a theoretical account of the motivational power of such
texts and of the traditions in which they are conveyed.53 He frequently makes it clear
that he does not regard himself as personally religious but it is clear that he
recognises the power of religious texts and traditional practices to form attitudes and
values within a culture, and that he regards appropriate values and attitudes as
extremely important for the achievement or lack of achievement of human
capabilities. One area where this is strikingly clear is in the field of gender. Classic
texts and traditional practices, often of a religious nature, will form attitudes and
values towards gender and will help to determine what are seen as appropriate roles
for male and female in society.54 If women experience various forms of
unfreedom, this may well reflect the attitudes and values of religious texts and
practices.
Though Sen, as we have seen, speaks in passing of collective capabilities, this
still seems to me to fall short of social capabilities, which would be the
capabilities that are endemic within a society, such as the capability to sustain a
deliberative democracy.55 The existence of such a capability depends upon traditions
that are genuinely social and that are cultivated in a range of ways within a culture.
One key way will be by the attention paid to classic texts that are genuinely
common property. One could take a key step further and talk of the symbols
which are common property within a culture, and make reference to Paul Ricoeurs
lapidary statement that the symbol gives rise to thought.56 In other words, within
the symbolic resources of a culture there lies the raw material of its modes of
reflection and self-understanding. If the elements of deliberation and debate are not
there within the symbolic resources, the resources for democracy are that much
weaker.
Sen makes it very clear that, as far as India is concerned, he is engaged in a
hermeneutic battle with those whose understanding of Hinduism is conditioned by
the approach of the Hindutva party. This is a conflict of interpretations (cf.
Ricoeur) that is of profound significance for the relationship between Hinduism and
democracy, between India and plural culture. What the debate is about is the
generative power within Hindu texts and practice for social capability in this
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case the capability to sustain a plural, participatory democracy within a culture

indebted to Hinduism (but by no means exclusively Hindu). Thus, Sen introduces
his discussion of Indian identity by saying, I wanted to understand better the
influence of values and identities on economic behaviour. I was particularly keen
to investigate the part that a vision of the countrys needs and a specifically Indian
identity played in firing industrial imagination and innovative action.57
I believe that by deploying and discussing a term such as social capability we
can see how Sens thought is complemented not only by that of a thinker like Rawls
who privileges critique of the social but by that of a thinker like Ricoeur who
privileges critique of the narratives and traditions which form a culture. Only by
engaging in the debate at this level can one begin to assess the capability of a
society: the ability of that society to sustain the institutions and practices which
make for individual flourishing. If there are societies which sustain such institutions,
these are the just societies to which Rawls refers, and if there are societies which
cannot, their failure (whatever its extent) is not that of individuals, but of the society
as a whole. If their unjust structures are to be transformed into what Rawls would
see as a just basic structure, this will require a singular type of individual
capability: the capability to engage critically with the narratives, texts and practices
which support structural injustice.
CONCLUSION: SEN, RAWLS AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF UNJUST
STRUCTURES
There can be no doubt about the commitment of Sen to transforming peoples lives,
especially the lives of the poor, for the better. His focus is always on enhancing the
capability set experienced in individual lives. He judges social transformation by
its effect on the freedoms of individuals. There can be no doubt of his strong
awareness of the power of social institutions and practices for good or evil in the
living of individual lives. I have tried to show in this chapter that the approach of John
Rawls, who approaches questions of freedom and unfreedom, well-being and lack of
well-being, as questions of justice that is as questions of distribution and as
questions of social relations provides an illuminating complement to Sen. Rawls
manages to reconcile an account of individual freedom remarkably like that of Sen
with an account of human flourishing that makes the social more fundamental than it
is for Sen. In focusing on the importance of a just basic structure of society, Rawls
opens the way to an understanding of social capability which Sen reaches after but
never quite attains. Since both Rawls and Sen address the question of social
institutions and their power to promote or to inhibit individual flourishing, we can
say that both, by different routes, come face to face with the problem of tradition
and the need for a critical, hermeneutic account of the way in which narratives,
myths and traditions support or fail to support the development of just structures.
The necessary, dialogical critique of unjust structures can usefully be seen as an
exercise not only of individual but also of sociall capability.
79
Nicholas Sagovsky is Visiting Professor in Theology and Public Life at Liverpool

Hope University and Canon Theologian at Westminster Abbey.
NOTES
1
Sen 2005: 280.

This has been done magisterially in Alkire, 2002.
3
Though there are texts in which Sen specifically addresses the question of public or social action,
e.g. Drze and Sen, 1989.
4
Sen (1999): xii-xiii.
5
Ibid.: 31.
6
Ibid.: 53.
7
Ibid.: 296.
8
Ibid.: 49-51.
9
Ibid.: 267.
10
Ibid.:178-84. That the absence of famines holds even for those democratic countries which happen to
be very poor, such as Zimbabwe is ironically supported by the advance of famine with the loss of
democracy in Zimbabwe.
11
Ibid.: 267.
12
See e.g. Sen 1995: 263-6; Sen 1999: 63-5.
13
Rawls, 2001:17.
14
Nagel, 1986.
15
Rawls, 1999a: 53. This wording accommodates the criticisms made by H.L.A. Hart of the way Rawls
expressed himself in the first edition of A Theory of Justice. See the discussion in The Basic Liberties
and their Priority in Rawls, 1993: 289-371.
16
See Rawls, 1999b: 49. The work of R.G. Wilkinson (1996) brings together a wide body of evidence to
show that the size of the gap in wealth between the richest and the poorest in society is itself a
determinant of the health of the least healthy in that society taking longevity as a measure of health.
He draws on M. Marmots classic Whitehall Study to make much the same point about positional
goods so we may legitimately suggest it applies in general to what Rawls calls primary goods. To
mis-quote the poet T.S. Eliot, Human kind cannot bear very much inequality.
17
See Rawls, 1993: 291, my emphasis.
18
See Sen, 1999: 37, where he stresses the intrinsic importance of human freedom.
19
See Sen, 1999: 63-5. The critique, as I show in this chapter, is overstated. Sen and Rawls are closer to
each other in their concern for the conditions of effective liberty than Sen allows.
20
Rawls, 1993: 326. Rawls is reluctant to specify what measures should be taken politically to guarantee
the fair value of the basic liberties, but he does note that, One guideline for guaranteeing fair value
seems to be to keep political parties independent of large concentrations of private economic and social
power in a private-property democracy a salutary point in the light of British and, still more,
American political practice. Ibid.: 328.
21
Rawls, 1999b: 50.
22
Rawls, 1993: 166.
23
Rawls discusses Sens approach in Political Liberalism (182-3), concluding, I agree with Sen that
basic capabilities are of first importance and that the use of primary goods is always to be assessed in
the light of assumptions about these capabilities. The point is amplified in The Law of Peoples (13,
note 3), which makes specific reference to Sens Inequality Re-examined.
d Martha Nussbaum is
mistaken when she says in Women and Human Development (68) that Rawls neglects this point.
24
See especially Martha Nussbaums Central Human Functional Capabilities as listed in Nussbaum,
2000: 78-80.
25
See particularly Sen, 1992; for a clear, brief account Sen, 1993; for an extended introductory account
Sen, 1999: 74-6, passim. For a searching, secondary discussion, see Alkire, 2002.
26
Rawls, 1999a: 79. When Rawls gives a revised list of primary goods in Rawls, 1993:181, he adds the
social bases of self-respect. In the same essay (187-90), he discusses primary goods as citizens
needs. Sen presses the point against Rawls that primary goods are not constitutive of freedom as
such, but are best seen as means to freedom (1992:80). This is to misdescribe Rawls (very broad) use
2
80
NICHOLAS SAGOVSKY
of primary goods, which includes but is not limited to opportunities. I would argue against Sen
that Rawls understood his point perfectly well, and that it was precisely because of this point that he
stressed the need for the basic structure of society and for social institutions to be judged by the
extent to which they functioned in accord with justice i.e. with the provision of effectivee access to
primary goods by the most disadvantaged in society.
27
Rawls, 1999a: 79.
28
Rawls, 1999a: 80. Critics of Rawls would at this point highlight the place of irrational desire in human
behaviour, both individual and social, and the importance of a therapy of desire for human wellbeing.
29
Sen frequently discusses the importance of the broadest possible informational base in support of good
decision-making (cf. Sen 1999: 54-86) and of the relation between rationality and freedom but his
critique tends to focus on the social constraints of rationality rather than socially situated and socially
appropriate rationality (by contract with Rawls in Political Liberalism, Nussbaum or MacIntyre).
30
Sen overstates the difference between them when he discusses his own differences with the Rawlsian
focus in Sen 1992: 8. Sen writes, Two persons holding the same bundle of primary goods can have
very different freedoms to pursue their respective conceptions of the good. Rawls, as I read him,
would grant this point completely, stressing the place of social institutions in ensuring access to
effective freedoms.
31
Rawls, 1999a: 179.
32
Ibid.
33
See Rawls, 1999a: 62-78 on Decent Hierarchical Peoples.
34
Rawls, 1999a: 6-7.
35
Rawls, 2001:10.
36
Sen, 1999.
37
See The Basic Structure as Subject in Rawls, 1993: 257-88.
38
Ibid.: 268.
39
Ibid.: 269.
40
Ibid.: 270, emphasis is mine.
41
Ibid.: 51.
42
Ibid.: 54-8.
43
Rawls,1999a: 47.
44
Ibid.: 48.
,
45
Since one of Rawls principles of justice is that positions should be open to all, no institution could for
him be more unjust than an hereditary monarchy.
46
See Julie Clagues essay: 177-96.
47
See Hollenbach, 2002.
48
Rawls discusses intergenerational justice in A Theory of Justice (251-8), concluding that Persons in
different generations have duties and obligations to one another just as contemporaries do. The present
generation cannot do as it pleases but is bound by the principles that would be chosen in the original
position to define justice between persons at different moments of time. There has been a great deal of
reflection on Rawls and intergenerational justice. See for example Beckerman and Pasek, 2001;
Gosseries, 2003; Visser tHooft, 1999; Wolf, 2003.
49
Sen. 2002: 85.
50
Ibid.: 71, 261-3.
51
Sen, 2005: 12, emphasis is mine.
52
Ibid., p. 8; see also, Sen, 1999: 13.
53
For such an account by a Christian theologian, see Tracy, 1981.
54
See e.g. Sen, 1995: 260: The tolerance of gender inequality is closely related to notions of legitimacy
and correctness. It us therefore important to scrutinize the underlying concepts of justice and
injustice.
55
Sen has, however, written recently [2005: 250] of gender inequality as a far-reaching social
impairment, emphasis is mine.
56
Ricoeur, 1967: 347-57.
57
Sen, 2005: 335.
81
REFERENCES
Alkire, S. (2002), Valuing Freedoms: Sens Capability Approach and Poverty, Oxford: Oxford University
Press
Beckerman W. and J. Pasek (2002), Justice, Posterity and the Environment, Oxford: Oxford University
Press
Drze, J. and A. Sen (1989), Hunger and Public Action, Oxford: Clarendon Press
Gosseries, A. (2003), Intergenerational Justice, in H. La Folette (ed.), Handbook of Practical Ethics,
Oxford: Oxford University Press
Hollenbach, D. (2002), The Common Good and Christian Ethics, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press
MacIntyre, A. (1985), After Virtue, 2ndd ed., London: Duckworth
Nagel, T. (1986), The View from Nowhere, New York: Oxford University Press
Nussbaum, M. (2000), Women and Human Development, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Rawls, J. (1993), Political Liberalism, New York: Columbia University Press
Rawls, J. (1999a), A Theory of Justice, revised edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press
Rawls, J. (1999b), The Law of Peoples, London: Harvard University Press
Rawls, J. (2001), Justice as Fairness, Erin Kelly ed., London: Harvard University Press
Ricoeur, P. (1967), The Symbolism of Evil, Boston: Beacon Press
Ricoeur, P. (1992), Oneself as Another, London: University of Chicago Press
Ricoeur, P. (2000), The Just, London: University of Chicago Press
Sen, A. (1992), Inequality Reexamined,
d Oxford: Oxford University Press
Sen, A. (1993), Capability and Wellbeing, in A. Sen and M. Nussbaum (eds), The Quality of Life,
Sen, A. (1995), Gender Inequality and Theories of Justice, in M. Nussbaum and J. Glover (eds), Women
Culture and Development, Oxford: Oxford University Press
Sen, A. (1999), Development as Freedom, Oxford: Oxford University Press
Sen, A. (2002), Response to Commentaries, Studies in Comparative International Developmentt 37(2):
78-86.
Sen, A. (2005), The Argumentative Indian, London: Allen Lane
Tracy, D. (1981), The Analogical Imagination, London: SCM
Vissert Hooft, H. (1999), Justice to Future Generations and the Environment, Dordrecht: Kluwer
Wilkinson, R.G. (1996), Unhealthy Societies. The Afflictions of Inequality, London: Routledge
Wolf, C. (2003), Intergenerational Justice, in R.G. Frey and Heath Wellman (eds), A Companion to
Applied Ethics, Oxford: Blackwell
CHAPTER 5
LISA SOWLE CAHILL
JUSTICE FOR WOMEN

Martha Nussbaum and Catholic Social Teaching
OVERVIEW
The economist Amartya Sen and the philosopher Martha Nussbaum have developed
an approach to crosscultural politics and ethics based on the idea that people
everywhere share certain basic forms of human functioning that are essential to
wellbeing and flourishing. Genuine freedom consists in having the capability to
choose a lifestyle in which the sorts of functioning one values most can be realized.1
Nussbaum has applied the so-called capability approach to justice for women
internationally, focusing on women who are not only victims of gender
discrimination, but who are also living in poverty. Although she writes for an
international audience, Nussbaum is a self-professed liberal for whom individual
liberty is a paramount moral value, and the basic criterion of justice. It is my
contention that Martha Nussbaums work offers valuable resources for feminist
theory and politics. Yet her emphasis on the individual leaves out of account the
importance that society and social institutions have in constituting individual
identity, and in providing the conditions of meaningful individual freedom.
Nussbaum is also very suspicious of religion, as prescribing gender roles that inhibit
womens free self-determination and reinforce their inequality.
I believe that it is useful to bring Nussbaum into conversation with other
approaches that take the sociality of the person more seriously and value it, that see
persons as inherently embedded in and even constituted by social relationships, and
that can envision a positive role for religion in helping to form communities and the
identities of individuals within communities. While Nussbaum is an ardent advocate
of womens equality, her approach needs to become both more social and more
attuned to the positive potential of religion, if it is to persuade and succeed in the
communitarian and religious cultures of most of the world. Religion can even
instigate or assist social reform toward gender equality, by presenting religious
images, narratives, and practices in which women and men are equal participants.
Many conversations partners for Nussbaum could be found. This chapter will
compare Nussbaums later work with Catholic social teaching, including writings of
83
84
LISA SOWLE CAHILL
the late John Paul II, who advocated for the poor, and advanced official Catholic
views of women far beyond what they had been a generation earlier. One special
feature of Catholicism is that it has a tradition of social encyclicals dating back to
the late nineteenth century. In these encyclicals, the popes address society at large,
attempting to engage people from a variety of cultures and traditions in discourse
about the common good. Catholic tradition sees human fulfilment as social, with
participation in institutions as essential to human wellbeing and happiness. Yet this
tradition has not in fact endorsed full participation for women as strenuously as the
participation of men. Nussbaum, in turn, can thus bring to Catholic social tradition a
much greater investment in and commitment to the equality of women. I believe
there is potential in these two quite different perspectives to yield a feminist theory
and politics that is committed to womens equality and liberty, that values social
traditions and connections, and that incorporates religious belief and practice. The
work of feminist theologians has begun to realize this mutually beneficial correlation of liberal politics and Catholic teaching, and makes it clear that the reform of
institutions is essential to justice for women.
SPECIFIC POINTS OF COMPATIBILITY AND CONTRAST
First, both Nussbaum and Catholic tradition defend versions of what I would call
moral realism. Second, a key source of a morality that is true to human reality is the
fact of human embodiment. A major project for Catholic social ethics is to rebuild
the variety of moral realism traditionally known as natural law.2 Natural law
theory, of course, is rooted in Aquinas and traces back in some ways to Aristotle.
Similarly to the capability approach, natural law theory holds that human beings
share certain basic characteristics and experiences that are recognizable by reason,
indicative of happiness, and part of the good life for human beings. Many of these
characteristics or forms of functioning are defined by the needs and capacities of the
human body: food, shelter, sex, procreation, and the need to nurture and educate
developing offspring, as well as to live cooperatively in society to secure basic
needs. Though they may take different cultural forms, food cultivation, family,
parenthood, education, and defence against enemies are part of any community and
are recognized as goods to be protected. At some basic level, then, shared values
and norms can and should guide human conduct and social organization. Morality
and justice are not just decided by individuals, invented by societies, or prescribed
arbitrarily by authorities, religious or secular. They derive in some fundamental
sense from what it means to be human, that is, an inviolable individual with needs
and capabilities, and a rightful participant in the common good of society. Thus
interreligious cooperation, and cooperation between religious and secular entities,
is necessary and possible in the pursuit of social justice. In the Christian version of
natural law, morality and justice also derive from creation by one God, to whom
humans, their communities, and their happiness are ultimately oriented.
Moral realism has fallen on hard times. The idea that human beings have more in
common than what separates them is under a cloud. Ours is an era in which
normative constructions of morality are under heavy attack from postmodern
JUSTICE FOR WOMEN
85
cultural relativism, as well as the liberal individualism that pervades modern

political traditions. Natural law tradition has typically maintained that basic human
nature and its requirements should be evident to all reasonable persons. But many
now object that natural law ideas were always essentially religious in nature (hence
not applicable outside the fold), or that what seems natural is simply the result of
tyrannical social conditioning. Familiar examples of discredited natural law
teachings are the inferiority of women, innate sinfulness of homosexuals, primacy of
procreation in justifying sex, acceptability of slavery, and immorality of loaning
money at interest. The most conspicuous alternative to natural law, in both
philosophy and popular culture, is a laissez-faire combination of trendy postmodern
deconstruction and old-fashioned political liberalism. In such a stance, moral values
are held to be relative to cultures or even to individual preferences, but the freedom
of all to adhere to their chosen moral worldview is affirmed as an absolute.
John Paul II was unhappy with this turn and so is Martha Nussbaum. Their
reasons, of course, are not the same. The pope called for a renewal of biblical
spirituality and a return to traditional sexual norms.3 Martha Nussbaum is sceptical
about anything that smells of metaphysics,4 portrays religion mostly as
repressive,5 and advocates for more sexual freedom for women and gays,6 although
she does mention the late pope approvingly for having endorsed the basic rights of
women.7 Where Catholic natural law tradition and Nussbaum most importantly
converge, however, is in their hostility to relativism, their suspicion of many FirstWorld political agendas, their advocacy for the poor, and most especially their
conviction that there are certain basic requirements of human flourishing that any
decent society ought to meet.
But there are also important differences. In Catholic social teaching, sociality
and social interdependence are just as essential to personhood and social justice as
are individuality and individual rights. Human embodiment provides material
connections in time and space to other persons and the environment. It is important
not only to personal identity, but to social roles and relations. Insofar as the body is
sexual and reproductive, some of the social relationships within which embodiment
is experienced are kinship and family. Social structures organizing sexuality and
kinship or family have been important in Catholic social teaching because they
correspond to the social nature of sexual and reproductive embodiment.
However, Catholic tradition typically has exaggerated the significance of
womens sexual and reproductive embodiment in relation to that of men. It has
defined womens identity more in terms of sexual and reproductive roles, and has
also either given less social importance to these roles, or interpreted functioning in
them in a way that limits access to other roles. It has made an almost absolute link
between womens sexual embodiment and reproduction, though it has not done so
regarding men. Sex and gender represent areas in which Catholicism has interpreted
the significance of embodiment for structural justice for men and women unequally.
Catholicism has been right to identify human sociality as essential, and to recognize
that human sexual and reproductive embodiment have social dimensions, but it has
been wrong to endorse structural inequality for women in these areas.
Martha Nussbaum, on the other hand, reads sex and gender justice too much on
a liberal model of personal choice and not enough in terms of the social roles to
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LISA SOWLE CAHILL
which sex and reproduction lead as human embodied realities. Even though
affiliation is one of Nussbaums basic categories, involving a life with and for
others, she does not clearly develop the sorts of social relationships and
communities, like kinship and family, that sex and parenthood actually entail
crossculturally. She treats marriage, parenthood, and family largely in terms of their
oppressive effects on women, not in terms of their possible role as embodied
developments of sexuality, in a life with and for others. Positively, though, on her
liberal model, Nussbaum does see womens basic rights, and sexual rights
specifically, as central justice concerns.
What Catholic social teaching could bring to Martha Nussbaum is greater
recognition of the sociality of persons, and of the social dimensions of every aspect
of human embodiment. What Martha Nussbaum could bring to Catholic social
teaching is the commitment to see womens basic human needs and rights as
primary, in no way to be subordinated to their reproductive roles. Gender should not
be interpreted or practised in such a way that womens basic needs and rights are
effectively undercut, even if affirmed in theory.
In addition to the similarity between Nussbaum and Catholic social ethics on
embodiment as the basis of social justice, and their differences on intrinsic sociality
and gender, there are two further points of comparison and difference. These are the
role of religion and of the emotions in seeking structural justice. Nussbaum treats
religion as primarily a negative force in womens lives, detailing at some length the
atrocities to which it has led.8 The emotions are very important to Nussbaum,
especially the emotion of compassion, which she believes it crucial to evoke and
nurture in order to achieve just persons and structures. She makes no connection,
however, between the emotions and religion, especially the potential of religious
traditions to shape members in compassionate attitudes and to prophetically
denounce unjust structures. More attention should be given to compassion as a
social emotionnot only individuals but also communities can embody compassion
and compassionate action, and the enhancement of this ability is critical for
structural change.
The remainder of this chapter will explore in more depth Nussbaums liberalism,
and Catholic social teachings theory of the common good, then bring the two into
dialogue on four specific claims of Catholic social teaching (about global common
good, subsidiarity, work, and gender). I will conclude with a brief consideration of
themes from Catholic feminist theology. The point of this interaction is to develop
the receptivity of Nussbaums liberal feminist philosophy to discussions of social
justice for women as requiring community membership and participation; and to
develop and accentuate the participation and equality of women in Catholic theories
of the common good. Finally, taken together, I believe these two approaches can
constitute a new, useful, and productive model for advancing gender justice in a
global context.
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87
NUSSBAUMS LIBERALISM
Nussbaum has a voracious intellect that is constantly readjusting itself. The results
are unfailingly impressive and provocative. Are they equally coherent? There are at
least three pieces of Nussbaums philosophy that provoke further analysis and raise
questions about how the elements of her vision make up a coherent approach to
justice for women that includes both a theoretical explanation and an effective
political response. These three elements are Nussbaums inductive approach to
universal values; her incorporation of the emotions into the process of moral
knowing and evaluation; and the priority she gives to autonomy and liberty as moral
criteria, especially in sexual ethics.
Nussbaum sees herself as a liberal and an Aristotelian. Her brand of liberalism
derives from Kants requirements of equality and equal respect, and places a high
emphasis on critical reason.9 What she takes from Aristotle is the conviction that
human beings have certain basic needs and capabilities, preconditions of happiness
and wellbeing. This is the basis of Nussbaums capability approach, developed
and refined through many writings.10 Beginning with the Kantian principle that each
person is an end, Nussbaum then relies on an intuitive idea of a life that is worthy
of the dignity of the human being, an idea free of any specific metaphysical
grounding. The basic minimum conditions of a life with dignity are certain human
capabilities, on which societies ought to be able to achieve an overlapping
consensus, no matter what conceptions of the good individuals or cultures within
them might endorse.11 These preconditions include life; bodily health; bodily
integrity; senses, imagination, thought; emotions; practical reason; affiliation
(relationship to others, including both ones own concern for and engagement with
others, and the social bases of self-respect and dignity); relationship to other species;
play; and political and material control over ones environment.12
Unlike many liberal philosophers, Nussbaum believes it is not only possible but
also necessary to talk about universal obligations,13 living a life that is truly
human,14 and about specific types of social organization that are or are not
compatible with human dignity.15 Again unlike most liberals, Nussbaum explicitly
includes material goods along with civil liberties, and has an inductive, dialogical,
and intercultural method of specifying them. Nussbaum defines the goal of this
process as reflective equilibrium, using a phrase of John Rawls.16 Given her
inductive method, Hilary Charlesworth has proposed that universalism may be a
misleading characterization of Nussbaums ethics, and proposes transversalism
instead.17 The term suggests a method of inquiry in which agreement does not come
from pre-existing premises, but is built up by empathetic and mutually critical
dialogue. Partners cross back and forth into one anothers territories, expressing
their own values and claims, listening to others, modifying their own perspectives,
discovering together the moral nonnegotiables, and adopting an appreciative yet
critical approach to their different realizations in different cultures.
A notable contribution is Nussbaums insistence that the emotions are part of
a worthwhile human life, and more than irrational passions. Emotions form
cognitive connections to others that nuance and texture the moral life. Emotions are
not just the fuel that powers the psychological mechanism of a reasoning creature,
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LISA SOWLE CAHILL
they are parts, highly complex and messy parts, of this creatures reasoning itself.
Hence, without emotional development, a part of our reasoning capacity as political
creatures will be missing.18
Where Nussbaums position diverges from Catholic natural law is in the
consistent priority she still gives to autonomy, freedom, and the ability to choose
and fashion a life.19 In emphasizing free choice, Nussbaum rightly decries cultural
subordination of womens welfare to familial, social, or religious interests. But she
less frequently examines how her basic value of noninstrumental respect20 for
individuals could be enhanced by more attention to social participation and
responsibility, so important in non-Western cultures, as well as in Catholic social
teaching. In these sources, to respect persons means to recognize their social
interdependence, social responsibilities, and right to social participation. However,
Nussbaum persistently explains justice with principles of political liberalism. In
other words, individual liberty is for her the controlling value.
The political theorist John Gray offers a succinct definition of the prime values
of liberalism. According to Gray, the modern liberal tradition has a distinctive view
of man and society, consisting in the following elements:
It is individualist, in that it asserts the moral primacy of the person against the claims of
any social collectivity; egalitarian, inasmuch as it confers on all men the same moral
status and denies the relevance to legal or political order of differences in moral worth
among human beings; universalist, affirming the moral unity of the human species and
according a secondary importance to specific historical associations and cultural forms;
and melioristt in its affirmation of the corrigibility and improvability of all social
institutions and political arrangements.21
I would say Martha Nussbaum subscribes to all of this political agenda, excepting
the sexist language. In view of the oppressive hierarchies of many traditional
societies, she emphasizes the universal equality of the individual in order to bring
about change in the social and political institutions that have oppressed women for
centuries. However, the liberal emphasis on the individual tends to undermine the
other three values named by Gray. Individual choice is always exercised within
social structures that maximize the freedom and power of a few while constraining
that of the majority. In actuality, the freedom of some individuals cancels out the
equality of others. Likewise universal dimensions of morality may be recognized in
theory, but not put into practice, since the power of the privileged enables their
evasion of the equal application of norms of justice. Finally, social improvement
requires that practices and institutions that maintain unequal social status be
addressed. However, to the extent that liberal meliorism concentrates on the
maximization of liberal freedom, and limits its definition of equality to legal
enjoyment of civil and political rights, it cannot gain leverage against the de facto
unequal allocation of basic material and social goods without which it is impossible
to fully exercise freedom or gain equality, even if persons are defined as free and
equal under the law. An exclusive focus on the free and autonomous individual is
partly responsible for the continuing hold of patriarchy in so-called liberal
societies. Women are given civil rights, but in fact continue to experience
discrimination in the family, education, and workplace.
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89
A familiar example of the inadequacy of a liberal model of freedom in todays

global economy is the behavior of transnational corporations, which are governed by
entrepreneurial CEOs and Boards of Directors, and that may be understood
as collective individuals. The structures of global market capitalism enable
corporations to take decisions on investment and production that maximize their
own opportunities for growth. Local producers of goods, consumers, and workers
have a free choice to buy from or work for these corporations, or to compete with
them in the marketplace. However, the economic structures within which choices
occur favour the corporations over, say, subsistence farmers, and also place wealthy
consumers and skilled potential employees in a much better position to select or
decline a relationship with the corporation. Corporations and their leaders may in
theory endorse a model of equal and free competition. However, the economic
disadvantage of competitors and the trade agreements negotiated by the more
powerful and economically secure organizations and interest groups will ensure that
the market is not really free. The inequities produced by such an economic system
cannot be addressed simply by invoking the principle of liberty, without also calling
into question the way status and access are defined in any given society or in the
global arena.
There is something missing in the liberal scheme that can be provided by
Catholic social teaching, and whose recognition is necessary for social change
toward genuine equality. This missing factor is the intrinsically social nature of the
person. The autonomy focus neglects precisely those social conditions of belonging,
recognition, and access to material and political goods that Nussbaum wants to
secure for women with her capability approach. In her analysis of Nussbaums
feminist internationalism, Hilary Charlesworth grants that the capability approach
transcends the standard Western obsession with civil and political liberties at the
expense of economic and social equity. Nonetheless, Nussbaums vocabulary may
indicate that greater weight is accorded to civil and political rights than to the
material necessities that are also necessary to womens ability to function. For
example, the term right is used only in relation to political participation, protection
of free speech and association. The latter are described as fundamental.
Moreover, the rights of groups are not considered at all in the capability approach.22
Liberalism does not do full justice to the intrinsically social nature of human
individuality and freedom, to the social relations implied by sexual embodiment, or
to family relations. Nor does it highlight the necessary role of participatory
community in changing both individuals and social structures so that they are more
just.
Nussbaums liberalism is particularly in evidence in the area of sexuality, which
impedes her ability to challenge the unjust structures that deter women from
exercising sexual agency. For example, in Sex and Social Justice, Nussbaum states
that her starting point is that human beings should not be violated, and that the
fundamental bearer of rights is the individual human being.23 This focuses the
discussion of what is just in sexual relationships and in the institutionalization of
sex (e.g., in marriage and family) on the individual and his or her freedom from
interference. I would argue that belonging to an intergenerational family is just as
important a component of human identity as self-determining freedom, and even a
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precondition of healthy moral and social development. The sexual body locates one
within kin relationships, makes family survival possible, serves as a basis to unite
families and clans through intermarriage, and also serves as a baseline from which
living and care-giving arrangements that are analogous to kinship can be conceived
and defended. It is important to see these structures as essential to human
flourishing, but as also in need of critical evaluation in light of whether they serve
the flourishing of all who participate in them. It is precisely these same structures
that, in distorted forms, are often biased against women. Distorted structures are
shaped according to inequitable gender roles that determine access to food, clothing,
medicine, education, authority in the family, and access to roles outside the family.
Nussbaum construes sexual ethics primarily in terms of individual choice and
individual relationships. She tends not to see broader social connections as intrinsic
to sexual meaning and fulfilment. This dismissal inhibits a more penetrating analysis
of reforms needed. A first problem is that liberal individualism does not correspond
to the way most women in most cultures seek happiness in their family relations,
including marriage and maternity. Second, liberalism looks for the corrective to
womens oppression in the legal protection of free choice, whereas in reality free
choice will not amount to the exercise of genuine sexual agency unless the
institutions of marriage and family are restructured.
Nussbaums tendency to define sexual ethics and flourishing almost entirely in
terms of individual sexual liberty is illustrated by the final chapter of her book on
the emotions, Upheavals of Thought. The final chapter ties emotional development
to the experience of sexual love. The literary resource Nussbaum explores is James
Joyces Ulysses. The ideal Joyces narrative provides, though, is not a more
adequate integration of sexual meaning into the individuals social relationships or
community. Joyce idealizes physical love, based on compassion between individuals
perhaps, and certainly on the freeing of sexual pleasure. The culmination is an
intimation of cosmic meaning through the contact of two bodies. These bodies have
sex but not grandmothers, children, parents, sisters, brothers, or great aunts.
Most cultures do cultivate the erotic in its own right, and in its connection to
ultimacy, through aesthetic and religious means. Yet for the poor women in the
world about whom Nussbaum is most concerned, the importance of sex in establishing ones place in family and community is undoubtedly of more importance
than Joycean sexual liberation. The institutionalization of sex in marriage and family
is undoubtedly a prime form of structural oppression of women, but it is not clear to
me that the answer is to cut loose all bonds of sexual connection except those based
on freely indulged pleasure.
I am not sure Nussbaum really thinks so either. A different approach is found
at the beginning of Upheavals of Thought, which opens with Nussbaums own
poignant recollections of her mothers death, and with memories of her interactions
with her mother as small child and through the years. She brings back to life through
memory and emotion the feeling of her mothers embrace as the toddler Martha is
rescued from a swarm of wasps, the lace collar of her mothers nightgown, the way
she wore her lipstick. Martha Nussbaum even experiences joy at the sight of her exhusband, and co-parent of her child, when he arrives at her mothers funeral. He
brings back twenty years shared in relationship to the lost mother and mother-in-
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law. These are all connections created by human sexuality, broadly understood to
include family. What if Nussbaum had chosen for her literary mentor, not the
disaffected Irish Catholic Joyce, but a woman author from her adopted culture,
India? I think of Rama Mehtas Inside the Haveli, which depicts womens solidarity
and child-raising in a world defined by sex roles, yet separate from men; or
Arundhati Roys marvelous God of Small Things, which places a modern Indian
woman at the centre of shifting cultural ideals of family, motherhood, sexuality, and
class. Either work might help to raise the question how to reform family structures
while still affirming their importance to human identity.
NUSSBAUMS LIBERALISM AND RELIGION
In works such as Women and Human Development, Sex and Social Justice, and
Upheavals of Thought, Nussbaum acknowledges through her examples that religion
can have a positive role in enhancing womens social equality. Here she gives much
more attention to the social components of individual identity and agency than is
typical of classical liberalism. For example, Nussbaum pays sustained attention to a
resistance movement called the Self-Employed Womens Association (SEWA), with
more than 50,000 members, which helps women in the informal sector to gain
credit, education, and a labour union. SEWAs offices are now housed in a new
marble office building where all the employees and clients are women. SEWAs
founder, Ela Bhatt, compares the bank to our mothers place, since a womans
mother takes her problems seriously and helps her to solve them.24 It turns out that
Bhatt is a deeply religious Muslim, who was permitted by her family to carry out the
religious rites at the funeral of her father, a prominent Brahmin judge. (The rites
were traditionally performed by men.) So both family and religious narratives,
that somehow permitted the inclusion of women in traditionally patriarchal social
and devotional practices, were influential in forming Bhatts commitment to
compassionate action on behalf of the poor.
It may be in connection to the cultivation of compassion as a social virtue, rather
than in relation to what religious traditions have held specifically about gender,25
that religion has the greatest point of entry as a positive force in a Nussbaumian
scheme of things. By means of his famous concept of a second naivet, Paul
Ricoeur many years ago clarified that religious meaning can arise from a critical,
interpretive reappropriation of religious symbols. The second naivet refers to a
provisional adoption by the philosopher of the feelings of the believerbut rather in
the mode of as if, in which we hear again their language or world and allow it to
have a transformative effect on our own.26 More recently, Paul Lauritzen has
elucidated how the emotions are engaged by the worldview evoked by religious
symbols, and how religiously formed emotions help constitute communal practices
embodying the values inherent in the symbols. Lauritzen even describes emotions
themselves as social practices organized by stories that we both enact and tell. A
religious vision of the world forms the affections of those who live within it, and
therein lies the power of its symbols to bring about moral transformation.27
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In Upheavals of Thought, Martha Nussbaum does not discuss the role of religion
in forming compassionate emotions, but her language recalls biblical ideals of mercy
and love of neighbour when she defines compassion as the ability to make oneself
vulnerable in the person of another.28 Compassion prompts effective and sustained
action to ensure the capabilities of those whom one recognizes more theoretically as
having equal worth. According to Nussbaum, compassion can flower when one is
able to make judgments of similar possibilities for oneself, of nondesert on the part
of the sufferer, and of the importance of his or her wellbeing to ones own happiness
and goals.29
Nussbaum recognizes that compassion is developed socially, when individuals
participate in social practices that encourage compassion, through appropriate
education and institutional design.30 Literature looms large on the horizon of
Nussbaums vision of a liberal education that trains locally for responsible world
citizenship. Yet, as she tacitly recognizes, religion and its narratives can have the
same or greater effect. She finds in Abraham Lincoln an exemplar of the way in
which compassion can illuminate the conduct of public life. She cites his Second
Inaugural Address to illustrate the sympathetic narrative that led Lincoln to
condemn the injustice of slavery, while advocating mercy for the defeated
Confederacy. The passage she selects begins with a religious reference.
Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against
the other.With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as
God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the
nations wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow,
and his orphan to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace,
among ourselves, and with all nations.31
It is true that religion has often been used to create divisions and to justify
oppression, as was done by the slaveholders themselves. But the same moral
ambivalence belongs to the compelling works of literature that Nussbaum constantly
cites. The Iliadd and the Odyssey exalt war, exonerate those who intemperately
slaughter their foes, and narratively illustrate the ancient Greek philosophical view
that mercy is a defective emotion. What is needed to test their truth is a normative
view of human flourishing, prudent practical reason, and compassion. These belong
together and develop together, allowing us to discern with wisdom the truth or
falsity of our emotional knowledge and to implement just social relationships.
Religion can enable this process, though religion itself also must submit to the tests
of human wellbeing, prudence, and compassion.
In an article contributed to the journal Ethics in 2000, Nussbaum reviews her
own work, assesses what she considers to be its key points and developments, and
responds to some critics. This article was written after Sex and Social Justice and
Women and Human Development. In it, she makes what was for me the surprising
statement that her current political-liberal views lie closest to those of Maritain!32
While the Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain is certainly indebted to the modern
liberal respect for the individual in his reappropriation of the thought of Thomas
Aquinas, he has not abandoned the Catholic common good tradition with its
fundamental belief in the sociality of the person. Indeed he distinguishes the term
person from individual on precisely this score.
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Nussbaum cites The Rights of Man and Natural Law

w and Man and the State, and
is especially taken with Maritains proposal that people can come to agreement on a
list of human rights without agreeing on their metaphysical backing, or on whether
they have any such backing at all.33 Yet Maritain was also the author of a book
called The Person and the Common Good: In our treatment of the characteristic
features of the person, we noted that personality tends to by nature to
communion. There is a correlation betweenthe person as a social unit and the
notion of the common good as the end of the social whole. They imply one
another. The common good is thus the good human life of the multitude, of a
multitude of persons; it is their communion in good living, a communion in which
all persons participate, but in light of which they are not merely separate individuals,
but integrally related members of society.34
In this recent article, Nussbaum herself seems to stress more strongly the
importance not only of practical reason but of what she calls sociability, a term
that may connote innate social interdependence more strongly than the affiliation
category of her lists of capabilities, which she develops more in terms of freely
chosen relations.35 She also stresses that in recent work (Women and Human
Development)
t she has made a strong case for economic redistribution, and drawn a
connection between Aristotle and Marx. In other words, the material
interdependence of persons increasingly qualifies the liberal priority of the
autonomous and free individual. While not giving up her claim to be a liberal,
Nussbaum now spends considerable time defending her status as a social
democrat, along with Aristotle.36
CATHOLIC SOCIAL TEACHING, EMBODIMENT AND SOCIAL ROLES
Catholic social teaching lacks Martha Nussbaums attentiveness to womens rights,
but it compensates for her neglect of society and communities as the preconditions
of identity-formation and choice. Papal social encyclicals have cultivated a strong
sense of the sociality of the person, of the interdependence of persons and groups
within the common good, and of the social relations implied by the body, especially
the gendered body. The family, the rights of the family, the duty of society and
government to protect families, and more recently, the prophetic social role of the
family as domestic church have been key to the Catholic social tradition.37
However, this tradition has at the same time not only exaggerated the significance of
gender both in personal identity and in social relationships, it has also ratified and
enhanced the oppressive use of gender to make women subordinate to men in
virtually every social institution. Moreover, it has in fact used religious stories and
symbols to endow its construction of natural gender with greater authority, and
then used its influence to discourage more equal gender roles in public institutions,
both local and global.
Since the 1960s, the papal social encyclicals have moved toward understandings
of justice, common good, subsidiarity, and solidarity that are more inclusive and
participatory, and that envision a broader scope for womens social agency. This
is especially true of The Second Vatican Councils Pastoral Constitution on the
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Church in the Modern World,

d and the writings of Paul VI, John XXIII, and John
Paul II. Despite the reaffirmations of traditional, gender-unequal sexual teaching that
has gone on at the same time, these examples move the preferential option for the
poor into the centre of the Catholic social vision, and develop a strong advocacy
stance toward public policy, especially in view of globalization. John Paul II takes a
view of womens social roles that is remarkably different from that of popes only a
generation ago. If he and Catholic social teaching had arrived at an appreciation for
womens voice and agency that is as genuine and dialogical as Nussbaums, many
Church practices would be different, and the credibility of Vatican advocacy for
womens rights would be greatly strengthened.
A complete review of Catholic social teaching and its implications for women is
impossible here.38 I will cover briefly four pointsthe global common good and
solidarity, subsidiarity, work, and gender. I will conclude with a few observations on
the role of religion in social change for women, illustrated by feminist liberation
theology.
First, the global common good.
d The social encyclical tradition beginning in 1891
with Leo XIIIs Rerum Novarum has, like Aquinas, made the common good the
basis and centre of its social theory. Unlike Aquinas, the modern popes emphasize
the dignity and even rights of every single person within the common good, and
encyclicals since Vatican II gradually extend this concept internationally. Paul VI
uses the term universal common good, proclaims a global vision of man and of
the human race, and urges that wealthy nations should not grasp for material
prosperity at the expense of the poor.39
John Paul II has made this the signature theme of his papacy, decrying the
consumerism and materialism that seem to drive globalization. He endorses the
language of human rights, but urges that at the international as well as the national
level, the value of solidarity not be sacrificed to freedom,40 usually the freedom of
the powerful to exploit the weak. John Paul II develops one theme that corroborates
Nussbaums social philosophy, the preferential option for the poor, and one that
might by addition provide depth to it, the analysis of structural sin.
Sometimes Nussbaum seems perplexed by the reality of evil in the world, and at
a loss to explain its intransigence. She remembers with almost Augustinian grief and
remorse an incident in which as a small child she bit her mother. She laments the
horrible black and bitter sensation of my own internal badness, of powers of
destruction surging out of me that I had not known were there, a cauldron of
corrosive liquid.41 She recognizes that all human beings are capable of horrible
wickedness, a possibility that most of us have great difficulty recognizing, preferring
to think that evil people are monstrous and inhuman freaks.42 Yet, she wants to limit
the objects of eudaimonistic political compassion to the virtuous, to those who suffer
without deserving it, which may leave the rest of us evildoers out of the loop of
social transformation.
Hannah Arendt attains the insight that, without forgiveness, social amelioration
would be impossible. Without it the sins of past generations would hang like the
sword of Damocles over every succeeding generation. And even at an individual
level, repentance of ones own sins does not necessarily remove the evil that they
have already unleashed amid relationships and patterns of social behaviour.43 Arendt
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credits Jesus of Nazareth with discovering the indispensability of forgiveness in the

political realm. Forgiveness makes possible an open social process in which
beginning anew is possible. Forgiveness depends on a kind of love in which the
other, the offender, is recognized as a human person, despite the evil he or she has
caused, and even when the evil is radical. In social terms, solidarity is the equivalent
of this love.
Forgiving, in other words, is the only reaction which does not merely re-act but acts
anew and unexpectedly, unconditioned by the act which provoked it and therefore
freeing from its consequences both the one who forgives and the one who is forgiven.
The freedom contained in Jesus teachings of forgiveness is the freedom from
vengeance.44
Nussbaums liberal philosophy does not permit her systemically to engage the
ways vice inheres in social structures, captures the hearts and minds of individuals,
and intransigently resists the cultivation of the emotional virtue of compassion
through a liberal education. Therefore she remains unsympathetic to and without
compassion for those who suffer as a result of their own wrongdoing, and who may
even be unrepentant. From a Christian perspective, these are the ones who need
human and divine compassion the most. They are the ones whom Christians are
exhorted to forgive and love especially.45
John Paul II, having a deeper understanding than Nussbaum of the source and
therefore the remedy for evil, uses biblical narratives and imagery to urge a love
more radical than compassion for the deserving. The other is the neighbour, in the
language of Jesus, and he or she must therefore be loved, even if an enemy, with
the same love with which the Lord loves him or her.46 Radical solidarity is
required to remedy the kind of evil that inheres in social practices and institutions,
that conscripts the emotions, will, and practical reason, and that seems virtually
impossible to eradicate. Radical solidarity is enabled, in the Christian religious
narrative, by placing human evil and compassion against a transcendent horizon,
illuminating the partiality and fallibility of all human attempts at reform. This
narrative rests its hope in a power of unity and even of love that is beneath and
beyond human justice. At the same time, the Catholic social encyclicals repeatedly
insist that all the interlocking structures of society be informed by justice and, as far
as possible, transformed by love. Moreover, according to Catholic social teaching,
the abilities to offer forgiveness and to experience compassion are not limited to
believers and faith communities, though Christian symbols have as a primary
function to evoke and support these virtues.
A critic might at this point object that religious narratives are comforting, and
perhaps helpful as motivators, but not in any way demonstrably true. Here I would
appeal back to Nussbaums own construal of the emotions as having cognitive
value. They provide links to realities that reason may not at first make out. Also, an
important test of the truth of a religious vision is the practices it inspires, and, with
Nussbaum, whether or not it fosters the human flourishing of all, especially the poor.
Religious narratives can inspire new social movements, insofar as they can enable
the rediscovery of forgotten perspectives that constitute a critique of the status quo.47
The popes have been better at remembering the poor in general than on women in
particular. The religious vision of Catholic social teaching passes the test of practical
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justice insofar as it defends basic human goods for all. Yet, in its official
expressions, Catholic teachings gender-based interpretation of womens dignity
and roles can then eclipse womens basic needs. It also reinforces cultural traditions
and norms that devalue womens access to education, health care, and even food,
precisely on the basis of notions of womens special reproductive status, duties, or
limits. Here it fails the practical test, posed in terms of Nussbaums capabilities.
Nussbaum reminds us of womens perspective, capabilities, and needs, and of their
essential role in constituting narratives that meet the test of practical justice.
If women were more involved in the definition and prioritizing of the goods
essential to their own lives, cultural and religious biases against them would be
much easier to defeat. This leads us to the principle of subsidiarity, a practical
requirement of Catholic social teaching. This principle should furnish a built-in
procedural corrective to inegalitarian notions of justice. Martha Nussbaum and other
activists for womens welfare realize this and are committed to the involvement of
women, including poor, illiterate and marginal women, in the process of defining
human capabilities, needs, and rights. The Vatican and the popes do not share this
commitment. However, this blind spot is in conflict with the principle of Catholic
social teaching that specifies that local or subsidiary groups and communities
share authority over social arrangements with more comprehensive systems.
First enunciated in 1931 by Pius XI in Quadragesimo Anno,48 the principle of
subsidiarity was originally used to fend off Marxist collectivism; in later
incarnations, for example in the writings of Pope John XXIII,49 it has also been used
to refer to the duty of higher-level government, national or international, to take
action to rectify injustice at the local level. This principle is a way of recognizing
that human sociality requires civil society, and that a just society enables
participation in the common good by means of all the different networks,
communities and substructures of civil society. Pius XIIs apostolic letter,
Octogesima Adveniens, most strongly of all demands that responsibility for social
life be shared at the local level, recognizes that social arrangements and solutions to
problems will be pluralistic, and calls on Christians to take special responsibility in
political action for social transformation.50 This letter has not had the lasting impact
on later Catholic social teaching that it deserves, at least not in its official
expressions. Liberation theology, including feminist theology, however, does put the
emphasis on the ability and right of the poor to speak for themselves and to
participate in decisions concerning their welfare through local forms of association.
If this actually happened, as advised by Nussbaum, the gender imbalance in Catholic
social teaching would be corrected.
The value of participation in society, and the need to organize and engage that
participation in circles of association from the micro- to the macro-level, comes
through in Catholic social teachings treatment of work. The first encyclical of John
Paul II, Laborem Exercens, concerns the value and dignity of human work, the
importance of humane working conditions, and the transcendent significance of
every form of human labour. The encyclical reflects the popes experience of the
Solidarity movement in Poland, in which workers formed a trade union against the
communist government. Laborem Exercens affirms social justice for workers around
the world, and sees labour as providing for workers material support. Labour is the
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basis of cultural and social life, and a means of vocational fulfilment for the
individual. Unfortunately, however, this encyclical remains troubled by a bias that
has vexed the Catholic social encyclicals from the start, and that is a focus on male
work as productive labour that earns wages, while womens work is conducted in
the domestic sphere.51
A mans work is necessary, and should pay enough to support a family, for his
wife and children are dependent on him. A womans work is different, due to her
reproductive and maternal roles. In the words of Rerum Novarum, Womenare
not suited to certain trades, for a woman is by nature fitted for home-work, and it is
that which is best adapted at once to preserve her modesty, and to promote the good
bringing up of children and the well-being of the family.52 Laborem Exercens
corrects this unjust dependence of women somewhat by suggesting that alternatives
to a family wage paid to men might be found in other social measures such as
family allowances or grants to mothers devoting themselves exclusively to their
families.53 In this way the importance of womens work in its own right is
recognized and seen to merit direct compensation, a sign of its value to the whole
society. The nature of womens work is, however, still defined by womens
reproductive embodiment in a way that is hardly true for men.
The view of gender in Catholic social teaching is distinctive and hard to change.
Generally speaking, John Paul II still adheres to a view of femininity and
womens true nature that centres on maternity. He values womens special nature
but exaggerates and romanticizes typical, culturally prescribed virtues of women,
such as compassion and sensitivity. For example, in Mulieris Dignitatem, the pope
writes that the physical constitution of women is naturally disposed to
motherhood, and this even corresponds to the psycho-physical structure of
women. Hence, parenthoodis realized more fully in the woman, and no
programme of equal rights between women and men is valid unless it takes this
fact fully into account. Motherhood profoundly marks the womans personality,
and women (all women) are more capable than men of paying attention to another
person.54 As has been noted often, this idealization of womanhood works to limit
the ability of women to participate in public, political and economic roles. Further, it
discourages in men that virtue of compassion defined by Nussbaum as so central to
just political life, a definition that is certainly corroborated in John Paul IIs own
notion of solidarity.
It is a good thing that there is a tension in the popes thought about the social
roles of women and womens value. In Familiaris Consortio, he states that women
are equal to men in marriage and family. Moreover, the equal dignity and
responsibility of men and women fully justifies womens access to public
functions.55 In the 1995 Letter to Women mentioned by Nussbaum, he goes
further still. After praising womens family roles, he exclaims, Thank you women
who work! You are present and active in every area of life.56 In this letter, womens
work outside the home is no longer seen as merely an unfortunate economic
necessity that a just society should avoid. The pope again endorses equal pay for
equal work, praises the womens liberation movement, and speaks out against
discrimination against women, the exploitation of women, and violence to women,
including sexual violence.
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FEMINIST THEOLOGY
Feminist theologians have gone far beyond official expressions of Catholic social
teaching. They illustrate the potential fruitfulness of integrating Nussbaums
philosophy and religious social ethics, while Nussbaums capabilities approach
provides feminist theologians with a strong and cogent philosophical rationale for
affirming that women share needs, injustices, and goals worldwide, granting the
diversity of ways in which these experiences and goals are seen. Although
Nussbaum believes that feminist philosophy has been slow to take up issues of
concrete justice for women worldwide,57 this has not been true of feminist
theologians, from Elizabeth Cady Stanton and The Womans Bible onward.58 Third
World Christian women have been active redefining their religious traditions and
their social contexts, and in theorizing their action theologically.59 The
resymbolization of womens role in faith traditions has enabled womens
empowerment and political action. A counterpart of the renegotiation of womens
boundaries has been the re-imagining of symbols and concepts of God. Elizabeth
Johnson concludes her prize-winning book She Who Is: The Mystery of God in
Feminist Theological Discourse with an affirmation of womens action toward
overcoming what kills womens human dignity. Here and there such action
succeeds, granting fragmentary experiences of salvation, anticipations of the human
condition where suffering and evil are overcome. Light dawns, courage is renewed,
tears are wiped away, a new moment of life arises. Toward that end, Sophia-God of
powerful compassionate love serves as an ally of resistance and a wellspring of
hope, even under the shadow of darkness and broken words.60
Although Nussbaum maintains similarly that the emotion of compassion is
necessary to unite the well-off with the deprived in transformative solidarity, she
persists in portraying social transformation as if it proceeds with incremental
changes occurring in individual minds. She privileges normative argument and
reason, which change beliefs, which in turn reform emotions.61 This model,
however, does not explain the stories she tells of the transformation of women
through grassroots activism in India and Bangladesh, usually within religious
communities, and sometimes with the support of creative reinterpretations of
religious tradition. As we have seen, religious traditions can immerse individuals in
community narratives, sacramental rituals, and moral practices that challenge the
status quo, opening roads to justice, beyond equal respect, to a preferential option
for the poor, including justice for women.
In a study of Christian, congregation-based community organizing in the United
States, Stephen Hart shows how activists employed values, convictions, narratives,
and symbols from their faith traditions to cooperate ecumenically and to engage the
public sphere on issues of social justice such as subsidized housing for lowerincome families. According to Hart, a religious orientation or worldview can allow
political activists to put proximate ends in the context of larger purposes and
meaning, to find connections among persons and groups that might not agree with
one another on every moral and social issue, and to connect their agendas to cultural
and societal traditions and values that empower a broad base of participants.62
A Muslim scholar, Abdullahi An-Naim, applies similar principles to global civil
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society. He proposes a synergistic and interdependent model of the relationship

between religion and global civil society.63 Religion contributes to a politics of
solidarity and alliance formation, in which people can unite around justice and
human dignity.64 Religious communities acting and speaking in ways reflective of
their specific identities and theologies can encourage others to challenge cultural
assumptions and work together for mutual goals.
In Choosing to Feel: Virtue, Friendship, and Compassion for Friends, Catholic
theologian Diana Fritz Cates draws on Aristotle and Aquinas to develop a Christian
view of compassion as based on an extended circle of friendship. While Nussbaum
depicts compassion as the ability to incorporate the wellbeing of others into ones
own individual life plan, Cates preserves the sociality of persons found in Aristotle
and Aquinas by modelling compassion on a type of relationship in which the
friends flourishing becomes essential to ones own. She grounds the ability to
extend the relationship of friend to unfamiliar and distant others in an ultimate,
all-embracing friendship with God. Though Cates does not limit the ability to
experience inclusive compassion to religious persons, she does see a religious
worldview as providing a vision and love of the good that enables us to choose to
become persons who are deliberately disposed to be wanters with and wanters for
particular persons in pain. Thus we are prone to deliberate, to act and to feel as if
we are one with those who suffer, though remaining in other ways separate and
different.65
The political theologian Johann-Baptist Metz provides resources for
understanding the role of compassion as a social emotion, necessary to underpin the
social virtue of solidarity. According to Metz, the Christian biblical traditions of
God who acts uniquely in history to enter into human suffering create and sustain a
subversive and dangerous memory that counteracts abstract modern reason. In
memory of the self-offering Christ, Christians are able to enter into the suffering of
fellow human beings and take a stand against injustice. This is not just an individual
emotional response, but a social orientation cultivated, for instance, through
eucharistic practice centred on Jesus instruction to Do this in remembrance of
me.66 Paul Ricoeur follows a similar trajectory philosophically by defining
solicitude as an essential component of the good life with and for others in just
institutions.67 The initiative to act benevolently toward the other, and to give ones
action an institutional dimension and effect, is dependent on a sympathetic response
to the other as suffering, a response of compassion. Just living in practices aimed
at the mutual good of societys members, is a social and institutional extension of
the emotion of compassion, an emotion that can be considered a virtue when it is
intentionally cultivated as a ready disposition to aid those who suffer, either on the
part of an individual, or on the part of a society whose institutions incline social
behaviour toward habitual, consistent alleviation of the plight of the least well-off.68
A needed further step in understanding and implementing compassionate action
for justice is the explicit consideration of the role of social institutions. Institutions
and their role in society are key to Catholic social tradition and its key theme of
participation in the common good. Persons are formed (or not formed) in
compassion by membership in communities. Communities endure over time and
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exhibit various levels of internal organization and formal and informal interaction
with other forms of association and their constitutive patterns of social behaviour.
Moreover, it is social institutions that allow persons to have moral reach beyond
their immediate circle of associates. While both Cates and Nussbaum emphasize that
compassion is a particular emotional response to the particularity of suffering borne
by concrete others with whom we identify or whom we see as friends, social
justice especially global justice requires responsiveness to persons who exceed
ones personal capacities of knowledge and emotion. Institutions link persons
worldwide as well as locally, and make it possible for moral agents to affect others
who are both near and distant, both familiar and unfamiliar (or known only as part of
a collectivity, role, or status).
Practically, gender and economic justice for women and other oppressed groups
depends on global institutional action, taken, for example, under the auspices of the
United Nations, nongovernmental organizations, and advocacy networks.
Theoretically, the role of such action should find recognition as part of a theory of
the common good, or as part of a theory of respect for human beings and protection
of their capabilities. In Catholic social tradition, the importance to justice of multiple
opportunities for social action is captured by the principle of subsidiarity. Though
usually associated with local and national forms of government, it has more recently
been extended to apply both to civil society and to international institutions.
Subsidiarity needs to be reconceptualized so that its premise of a vertical line of
influence (from smaller and more local to larger and more comprehensive forms of
association) comes to include horizontal and transversal exercises of authority and
power-sharing.
Nussbaums liberal framework leads her to envision institutions primarily as
protecting autonomy, though implicit in her activism for women is a richer, more
nuanced view. To the extent that agents in liberal society are influenced by cultural
individualism and consumerism to disregard the conditions of life that must be
ensured for persons worldwide to flourish, the institutions in which those agents live
are shaping their actions, emotions, and moral ideas. Moral education to other ideas,
emotions, and patterns of conduct demands more than the reading of classical
philosophical and literary texts in which the meaning of life is examined, or
compassion narratively illustrated. It also requires immersion in economic, aesthetic,
religious, domestic, gender, and labour practices that encourage a disposition to feel
and behave compassionately. National, regional, international, and transnational
structures of moral agency give implicit or explicit voice and function to values and
commitments. Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink argue that international
advocacy networks have already improved worldwide practices regarding womens
rights, human rights, and the environment. Such networks give centrality to values
and principles, make creative use of information, and involve nongovernmental
actors with sophisticated political strategies.69 They also use striking pictorial
images and case stories to evoke an emotional response to a particular person or
situation that is then coaxed into institutional engagement and concerted action for
change. Only through social institutions can particular emotional responses and
knowledge take shape socially and come to have social effect. Nussbaum assumes
that institutions such as the family, the economy, and education will provide
JUSTICE FOR WOMEN
101
contexts for the enhancement of womens welfare and freedom, and that change in
these institutions is essential. Yet, with the exception of education (a liberal
education), she devotes little time to the positive potential of institutions to form
human behaviour positively and enhance womens well-being by including women
more integrally in the common good of society.
CONCLUSION
Catholic social teaching and Martha Nussbaum recognize the material and social
needs that derive from bodily realities all persons share in common. Both protest
against types of political, economic, and cultural control over patterns of access that
deprive some persons and groups of the conditions of a worthy human life.
Embodiment guarantees some common ground for debates about justice crossculturally, and provides a starting point for something like universal criteria of
justice, even if specific applications must be locally nuanced and inductively
reached.
However, while Catholic social teaching exaggerates the significance of different
male and female embodiment and constructs on it gender roles that result in injustice
for women, Martha Nussbaum downplays the positive significance of human
sociality, sex differences, family and religion in ways that may be damaging to her
project. I would deny that maternity is the preeminent role of women, that
parenthood is more definitive for women than for men, or that men and women are
destined for very different social vocations. Nonetheless, pregnancy, birth and
motherhood place special demands on women, which must be recognized and
supported socially and politically if women are to receive basic justice in other
areas, or the opportunity to function effectively in public roles. This is certainly true
in the traditional cultures in which Nussbaum has done most of her practical work.
Womens freedom and fulfilment are highly dependent on respect for those roles
that are assigned on the basis of sexual identity and connection, such as daughter,
wife, mother, and widow.
Finally, while Martha Nussbaum brings to Catholic social teaching a strong and
prophetic commitment to gender equality based on genuine and respectful
collaboration with poor women, Catholic social teaching could bring to Martha
Nussbaum a more social view of the person as participant in the common good, and
a narrative of transcendent meaning that connects with human experiences and
emotions, and enhances solidarity. A religious vision and the opportunity to
participate in the activism of a faith community can be powerful catalysts for social
change. Networks of religious organizations and activists can be effective agents for
human rights, womens rights, and issues of the common good, like fair labour
practices and ecology. These sorts of causes are central to the social agenda of
feminist theology and to Catholic social thought. Nussbaums capability approach
provides a theoretical grounding on which members of many cultures and traditions
can come together to discern what justice requires in the global environment of the
twenty-first century, and can join forces to challenge structural injustice.
Lisa Sowle Cahill is Professor of Christian Ethics at Boston College, USA.
102
LISA SOWLE CAHILL

NOTES
See Sen, 1999: 74-90. Several works of Nussbaum will be cited and discussed below.
For an overview, see Pope, 2001: 77-93. See also Rouner, 1997.
See John Paul II, 1995.
4
See Nussbaum, 1992, 1995.
5
She does not say religion has only bad effects on equality or on women, but she certainly concentrates
on these. A key concern of Nussbaum, from a liberal perspective, is that the guarantee of religious
freedom as a basic human right then works to permit religious traditions to claim exemptions to the
protection of other human rights of women. She has a list of seven cases from Asia and the Middle East
in which influential religious discoursethreatens the bodily integrity and equal dignity of persons,
specifically of women, a list that appears in at least two writings, see Nussbaum, 1997, 1999. In Women
and Human Development, one of these cases is introduced in a similar list, along with two additional
cases, see Nussbaum, 2000b: 169-74.
6
This is the central theme of Nussbaum, 1999.
7
Nussbaum, 1999: 84.
8
Ibid.: 85.
9
Ibid.: 73 ff.
10
A recent version is given in Nussbaum, 2000b: 78-80.
11
Ibid.: 5.
12
Ibid.: 78-80.
13
Nussbaum, 1999: 30.
14
Ibid.: 39.
15
Ibid., p. 30.
16
A recent endorsement of this phrase occurs in Nussbaum, 2003: 31.
17
Charlesworth, 2000: 76-77. This characterization would also apply to recent feminist critical retrievals
of Catholic natural law tradition, such as Traina, 1999.
18
Nussbaum, 2001: 3.
19
Nussbaum, 1999: 9.
20
Ibid.: 79.
21
Gray, 1986: x.
22
Charlesworth, 2000: 76-77.
23
Nussbaum, 1999: 102.
24
Nussbaum, 2000b: 15.
25
Let me pause to note that religious traditions and their founding documents are not always of one mind
on gender. Many feminist theologians have argued that the New Testament contains inclusive and
liberating portrayals of womens roles, that were then marginalized in the tradition. See Sch
h ssler
Fiorenza, 1983.
26
Ricoeur, 1967.
27
Lauritzen, 1998: 315, 318.
28
29
Ibid.: 321.
30
Ibid.: 392.
31
Ibid.: 437.
32
Nussbaum, 2000a: 102-140.
33
Maritain, 1943, 1951: 76-80.
34
Maritain, 1947: 47, 49, 51.
35
Nussbaum, 2000a: 119-120.
36
Ibid.: 109-112. See also Nussbaums Tanner Lectures, available on the internet at
philrsss.anu.edu.au/tanner/papers.
See Nussbaum, 2002.
37
See John Paul II, 1981a.
38
For an overview, see Curran, 2002. See also Coleman, 1991, which includes essays on specific topics,
including sex and gender.
39
Ibid.: 41.
40
John Paul II, 1987: 26, 33, 45.
41
2
3
JUSTICE FOR WOMEN
103
42
Ibid.: 452.
Arendt, 1958: 237.
44
Ibid.: 241.
45
On the difference between many religious traditions and Nussbaum on the inclusiveness of love, see
Cates, 2003 :336-338. Cates notes that Christian compassion is extended, paradigmatically by Christ, to
sinners as well as to the deserving.
46
John Paul II, 1987: 40.
47
Verstraeten, 2000: 76.
48
Pius XI, 1931: 79.
49
John XXIII, 1961: 53-54, 117, 1963: 140.
50
Paul VI, 1971: 46-51.
51
See Hinze, 1994: 511-540.
52
Leo XIII, 1890: 33.
53
John Paul II, 1981b: 19.
54
John Paul II, 1988: 18, 1981a: 22-25.
55
John Paul II, 1981a: 22.
56
John Paul II, 1995b: 139.
57
Nussbaum, 2000b: 7, 23.
58
For a historical overview of feminist theology, from its origins to contemporary global and ecological
manifestations, see Clifford, 2001.
59
See King, 1994.
60
Johnson, 1996: 271-72.
61
Ibid.: 258, 274.
62
Hart, 2001: 23.
63
Abdullahi, 1995.
64
Ibid.: 57.
65
Cates, 1997: 237. Cates (2003) refines the view of emotions presented by Nusssbaum by retrieving the
distinction found in Aristotle and Aquinas between appetite and reason. Cates maintains, with Aquinas,
that emotions as appetites are related to cognition, but not simply equivalent to thought. Rather than
being cognitive in their own right, emotions are movements of appetite that are informed by
cognition and subject to the guidance of practical reason (Cates, 2003: 335). This allows for the tension
or even conflict between emotional attraction or aversion and a reasoned judgment about the good.
66
Metz, 1995.
67
Ricoeur, 1992: 180.
68
Ibid.: 190.
69
Keck, 1998: 2.
43
REFERENCES
Abdullahi, An-naim (1995), Religion and Global Civil Society: Inherent Incompatibility or Synergy and
Interdependence?, Global Civil S ociety , ed. Marlies Glasius, Mary Kalder, and Helmut Anheier
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).
Arendt, Hannah (1958), The Human Condition, Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Cates, Diana Fritz (1997), Choosing to Feel: Virtue, Friendship, and Compassion for Friends, Notre
Dame IN: University of Notre Dame Press
________ (2003), Conceiving Emotions: Martha Nussbaums Upheavals of Thought, Journal of
Religious Ethics 31: 336-338
Charlesworth, Hilary (2000), Martha Nussbaums Feminist Internationalism, Ethics 111
Clifford, Anne M. (2001), Introducing Feminist Theology, Maryknoll NY: Orbis
Coleman, John A. (1991), One Hundred Years of Catholic Social Thought, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis
Curran, Charles (2002), Catholic Social Teaching: A Historical, Theological, and Ethical Analysis,
Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press
Gray, John (1986), Liberalism. Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press
Hart, Stephen (2001), Cultural Dilemmas of Progressive Politics: Styles of Engagement among
Grassroots Activists, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press
104
LISA SOWLE CAHILL
Hinze, Christine Firer (1994), Bridge Discourse on Wage Justice: Roman Catholic and Feminist
Perspectives on the Family Living Wage, in Ch. Curran, M.A. Farley, and R.A. McCormick, S.J.,
eds, Feminist Ethics and the Catholic Moral Tradition, New York and Mahwah NJ: Paulist
John XXIII (1961), Mater et Magistra, London: Catholic Truth Society
_______ (1963), Pacem in Terris, London: Catholic Truth Society
John Paul II (1981a), Laborem Exercens, London: Catholic Truth Society
_______ (1981b), Familiaris Consortio, London: Catholic Truth Society
_______ (1987), Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, London: Catholic Truth Society
_______ (1988), Mulieris Dignitatem, London: Catholic Truth Society
_______ (1995a), Evangelium Vitae, London: Catholic Truth Society
_______ (1995b), Letter to Women, Origins 25/9
Johnson, Elizabeth A. (1996), She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse,
New York: Crossroad
Keck, Margaret and Kathryn Sikkink (1998), Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in
International Politics, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press
King, Ursula (1994), Feminist Theology from the Third World: A Reader, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books
Lauritzen, Paul (1998), Emotions and Religious Ethics, Journal of Religious Ethics 16
Leo XIII (1890), Rerum Novarum, London: Catholic Truth Society
Metz, Johann-Baptist (1995), Freedom in Solidarity, in J.-B. Metz and J. Moltmann, eds, Faith and the
Future: Essays on Theology, Solidarity, and Modernity, Maryknoll NY: Orbis Books
Nussbaum, Martha (1992), Human Functioning and Social Justice: In Defense of Aristotelian
Essentialism, Political Theory 20.
_______ (1995), Human Capabilities, Female Human Beings, in Martha Nussbaum and Jonathan
Glover, eds, Women, Culture and Development: A Study of Human Capabilities, Oxford: Clarendon
Press
_______ (1997), Religion and Womens Human Rights, in Paul J. Weithman, ed., Religion and
Contemporary Liberalism, Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press
_______ (1999), Sex and Social Justice, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press
_______ (2000), Aristotle, Politics, and Human Capabilities: A Response to Antony, Arneson,
Charlesworth, and Mulgan, Ethics 111: 102-140
_______ (2000), Women and Human Development, New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press
_______ (2001), Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions, New York and Cambridge:
_______ (2002), Capabilities and Disabilities: Justice for Mentally Disabled Citizens, Tanner Lectures
in Human Values. Australian National University, Canberra. November.
_______ (2003), A Response to Wendy Doniger and Margaret M. Mitchell , Criterion 42/1
Maritain, Jacques (1943), The Rights of Man and Natural Law, New York: Scribners Sons
_______ (1947), The Person and the Common Good,
d Notre Dame IN: University of Notre Dame Press
_______ (1951), Man and the State, Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Paul VI (1971), Octogesima Adveniens, London: Catholic Truth Society
Pius XI (1931), Quadragesimo Anno, London: Catholic Truth Society
Pope, Stephen J. (2001), Natural Law and Christian Ethics, in Robin Gill, ed., The Cambridge
Companion to Christian Ethics, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press
Ricoeur, Paul (1967), The Symbolism of Evil, Boston: Beacon Press
_______ (1992), Oneself as Another, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press
Rouner, Leroy S. (1997), Is There a Human Nature?, Notre Dame IN: University of Notre Dame Press
Schussler Fiorenza, Elisabeth (1983), In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of
Christian Origins, New York: Crossroad
Sen, Amartya (1999), Development as Freedom, New York: Alfred A. Knopf
Traina, Cristina L.H. (1999), Feminist Ethics and Natural Law; The End of the Anathemas, Washington,
D.C.: Georgetown University Press
Verstraeten, Johan (2000), Re-Thinking Catholic Social Thought as Tradition, in J.S Boswell, F.P.
McHugh and J. Verstraeten, eds, Catholic Social Thought: Twilight or Renaissance?, Leuven:
Leuven University Press and Uitgeverij Peeters
CHAPTER 6
TERESA GODWIN PHELPS
NARRATIVE CAPABILITY
Telling Stories in the Search for Justice
INTRODUCTION
On March 21, 2003, retired Archbishop Desmond Tutu officially ended the work of
South Africas Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). Lauded, lamented, and
ceaselessly dissected, the TRC, the best known of the more than twenty truth
commissions that preceded it, launched, for good or ill, a culture of truth reports.
One commentator writes that since, and because of, the TRC, the international
community has become blindly besotted with truth commissions.1 The creation of a
truth commission has become the democratic bona fides for nearly every fledgling
leader, from Bosnia, to Peru, to Sierra Leone.
Although much has been written about truth commissions, both praising them for
the good that they accomplish and condemning them for offering poor substitutes for
justice, little commentary has analyzed the unarticulated claim that underlies their
very existence: that language (in this case stories) can stand in for violence. That is,
instead of arrests, trials, and punishment, the ways in which a state typically offers
redress to victims, states may instead collect and publish victims stories. Is there
any reason to think, and hope, that stories can carry this burden, can effectively end
revenge cycles? Can stories assist in the transformation of an oppressive unjust state
into a democratic and just one?
One thing is clear if we are attentive to history. If a new and fragile democracy
turns its back on some (or even all) of the victims of the regime it has replaced, if
the state fails in its responsibility to enact retribution, the victims will eventually
take revenge into their own hands, even if generations later. If a new government
turns its back on the victims, the victims will, in time, get their own back, becoming
the perpetrators in the next stage of the cycle, the cycle of revenge that has no
appropriate stopping place. If a state expects the victims of the world to be the ones
who make concessions, it ignores critical truths about human history and
psychology. A transitional democracy, fragile or not, mustt do something.
105
S. Deneulin et al. ((eds.), Transforming Unjust Structures: The Capability Approach, 105-120.
106
History shows us that revenge cycles end only when victims cede what was
once a sacred duty and a right to take revenge to the state andd the state properly
fulfils this duty. That is, when the state acts in their behalf, the victims are somehow
satisfied that they have retrieved something that they have lost. What they get back,
of course, can in no way be commensurable with what was lost by the harm.
Nonetheless, it must be, in some measure, satisfying. Is there any reason to think that
stories can work in this way, can satisfy victims, in actual transitional democracies
countries that have few choices as to the action they take as they make the transition
from a violent past? What are the relationships between language and power,
language and pain, language and violence? Is language an appropriate balance for
violence and pain? Can having a story told and acknowledged possibly satisfy the
emotional needs of victims? And if so, what forms should this language take?
I cannot answer all these questions in this chapter, but I would like briefly to
analyze the potential worth of storytelling from various angles and put forth theories
by which truth commission reports might be seen as a useful kind of justice. I use
this oddly modified phrase (useful kind of justice) because I want to suggest a
redefinition of the justice that allows human flourishing and empowers people to
live well. I want to suggest that justice is not a single entitysomething we get,
but instead is an ongoing process of which storytelling is a vital part. In so doing, I
will draw on the work of Amartya Sen, and particularly on Paul Ricoeurs use of
some of Sens theories. Sens capability approach eschews the narrow view
of human beings taken by much economic theorizing that focuses on what people
have (their possessions) rather than what they are (their selfhood).2 His theory is
based of a view of living as a combination of various doing and beings that
include achieving self-respect and being socially integrated.3 Ricoeur, using Sens
work, subordinates the two terms capabilities and rights under the encompassing
notion of recognition. Capabilities lead to self-recognition; rights to mutual
recognition. Ricoeur writes that [t]he first basic capability is the capacity to
speak.4 Thus storytelling, speaking about ones life, manifests a capability that is an
essential part of a broader and richer sense of what it means to be human and what it
mean to be just.
I hope in this chapter to establish that collecting and publishing victims stories
can accomplish significant ends, some obvious, some less so. My approach,
however, looks not at the requirements of international law or usual conceptions of
justice. Instead, I want to regard these reports first of all as stories and to think about
what stories do and how they operate in our lives. In so doing, I put forth seven
ways in which the activities of truth commissions may provide justice (imperfect,
perhaps, as justice always is) to victims and to their countries. The first of these
seven, and the one that is foundational to all the others, is that storytelling is an
essential human activity; it is what we humans do; it is an act by which we assert our
humanity. The others: two, stories can balance acts of violence; three, stories can
deliver truth; four, stories can translate and communicate among diverse people;
five, the storytelling setting is carnival; six, storytelling (remembering by telling
a story) is a sacramental act; and finally, the collections of stories and their
encompassing master narratives (the truth commission reports) are constitutive
documents that actually contribute to the founding of the renewed country.
107
Throughout I argue that personal storytelling contributes in an essential way to

human flourishing: We tell stories because in the last analysis human lives need
and merit being narrated.5
STORYTELLING AS AN ESSENTIAL HUMAN ACT
Psychological studies have shown that victims of loss and violence are helped in
their recovery by telling a story about what happened to them, that so doing
engenders a transformation from victim to survivor.6 This basic therapeutic method,
familiar at least since Freud, holds true among those who have suffered human
rights abuses at the hands of an oppressive government. Giving testimony about the
horrific events they have undergone facilitates the recovery. But what is it that
occurs? What does telling a story help a victim do?
Susan Brison, a victim of rape, gives an answer to this question and provides a
vivid description of the process by which the shattered pieces of the self that result
from trauma are reconnected in the telling of the story.7 In her description, she uses
the metaphor of being broken apart and of being put back together using language in
a speech act that effects a kind of healing. Several events occur in this healing:
the severed past and present are reconnected; the victim reconstructs herself or
himself as an actor in a reconfigured life; the victim changes from an object of
violence to a subject in ones own articulated story; traumatic memory is
transformed into a coherent narrative; and the victim is reintegrated into the
world. These reconnections are achieved through speech acts of memory,8 which
need not be public, of course. They may be entirely private: written in a journal or
spoken into a tape recorder. Or they may be confidential: told to a therapist in a
privileged relationship or told to a friend or family member. Or, as is the case with
many truth commissions, they may be told to an official representative of the state in
a public or private setting. In each case, the turning of inchoate pain and grief into a
narrative gives the victim control and distance from the traumatic event and
empowers the victim to get on with his or her life. Paul Ricoeur calls such an event
attestation, which is fundamentally attestation of self. This trust would be a trust
in the power to do, in the power to recognize oneself in the form of narrative .[T]o
say, its me here.9
But we must not be tempted to think that conceiving ones life as a coherent
narrative is a therapeutic necessity only for those who have been traumatized. So
doing places this urge toward story in an overly medical context. Making stories of
our lives is, according to many philosophers, what we humans do: Life can be
regarded as a constant effort, even a struggle, to maintain or restore narrative
coherence in the face of a ever-threatening, impending chaos at all levels.10 Paul
Ricoeur (following Aristotle) defines a story as a verbal experience where
concordance mends discordance.11 At a basic level, humankind is homo
narrans,12 that is, we understand our lives in terms of narrative. Narrative is our
primary way of organizing and giving coherence to our experience.13 In fact,
Hayden White maintains that the storytelling impulse is a ubiquitous mark of our
humanity: So natural is the impulse to narrate, so inevitable is the form of narrative
for any report on the ways things really happened, that narrativity could appear
108
problematical only in a culture in which it was absent [] or programmatically

refused.14 Narrative is simply there like life itself [] international,
transhistorical, transcultural.15
Yet even as we narrate our individual stories, these stories we tell about
ourselves and our lives are not autonomous, disconnected units. As we shape the
discordant events of our lives into a coherent narrative, we also discover our place
in larger units: in our families, communities, and nations. Our identity depends upon
our place in relation to others and to our community. Alasdair MacIntyre explains
this process: Every society enacts its own history as a more or less coherent
dramatic narrative, a story in which each of us has to find his or her own place as a
character, in order to know how to participate in it and how to continue it further.16
During years of oppression, violence, fear, and silence, many people lose not
only their personal voices but also their place. The dramatic narrative fostered
by an oppressive regime that has taken hold as the countrys history has either
excluded many people or appropriated and rewritten their stories. People are
personally storyless, isolated and alienated from the state and from other social
structures that define them. By encouraging them to come forward and tell their
stories and by providing an official (state-sponsored) setting in which their stories
are heard and acknowledged, a renewed state invites them back in and incorporates
their stories as part of a new national narrative.
When ones more or less coherent life story has been radically interrupted by the
random violence and chaos wreaked by an oppressive government, the integration of
that story (the interruption) into a narrative of ones own, into an attestation, is more
than healing; it is a human necessity. While it may sound strange to speak of
coherence in the aftermath of atrocity, it is this very making of coherence through
story that gives life meaning and order. Without a story, the violence takes on an
uncontrolled life of its own. A person remains acted upon rather than acting,
experiencing events as mere sequence, which is the fragmentation or dissolution of
self.17 The storyteller moves from passive victimization into being a morally
responsible agent capable of choosing the shape of the narrative in which one is cast.
Such restoration in cases of widespread atrocities that have afflicted many people
within a nation can transcend the healing that an individual may experience18 to the
restoration that a damaged country may require to proceed with the work of building
a new moral community that must encompass both victims and perpetrators. For a
country to enable and encourage its citizens to come forward and tell stories reflects
an attitude that the country desires its citizens to be responsible moral agents and no
longer passive victims. Thus the country itself benefits from having better citizens,
and the stories help to bridge the chasm between the past, in which people were
enemies to each other, and the present, in which former adversaries co-exist as
fellow citizens: the country before and the new country that is forever changed by
the events of the past.
For this wider healing to occur, the country must participate in the process; the
storytelling cannot be private or confidential. The stories must be heard by official
representatives of the state and publicly acknowledged. The goal is not exorcism
but acknowledgment.19 The public nature of the storytelling allows the individual
victims to see their story as part of a larger narrative about violence, and to know
109
that ones suffering is not solely a private experience, best forgotten, but instead an
indictment of a social cataclysm.20 It can transform individual victims into a
community of survivors.21
If the stories are told publicly, they have the potentiality to construct meaning for
individuals and also for nations. The stories are remembered and told in a present in
which not only a reconstructed self is possible, but also in which a new community
necessarily exists, a community that can hear and acknowledge the stories, a just
community that enhances the capabilities of its citizens and encourages mutual
recognition: the autonomy of the self will appear then to be tightly bound up with
solicitude for ones neighbor and with justice for each individual.22 The person
experiences self-recognition in confronting and relating the painful story; the
interlocutor and the speaker experience mutual recognition in seeing and hearing,
perhaps for the first time, the experience of the other.
The task of interpreting and making meaning of the collected stories of violence
and pain, and of integrating the individual stories into a larger narrative that
evidences that community, then, becomes the vital work of a truth commission. And,
as I will discuss more fully later, the stories themselves serve to reconstruct that very
community.
STORIES AS BALANCING
The need for balancing a harm is central to notions of both revenge and retribution,
seen most obviously in the widely-misunderstood mandate of lex talionis and in the
many metaphors used about revenge, such as getting even, settling accounts,
and getting my own back. No perfect balancing can occur, of course, no real
getting even. Your eye in return for my lost eye does not get my eye back; the
death of another in no way balances the loss of my loved one. There can be no
perfect balancing either for the individual or for the society; in the wake of massive
atrocity, there can be no tidy endings.23 The question nonetheless remains: what
approximates a balancing, what will count in the accounting?
Political violence and oppression are characterized by the appropriation,
manipulation, misuse, and finally silencing of language. In torture, for example, the
victims ability to make meaningful language, to speak words that belong to herself
or himself, is entirely appropriated by the torturer as the torture victim, through
the technology of pain, is reduced to pre-language moans and screams.24 The
widespread use of torture by an oppressive regime is not accidental or mere
sadism. The ultimate inexpressibility of physical pain has political consequences.
Language becomes inverted, meaning changed, and confessions put into the
mouths of victims, who have no language left but that constructed by the regime.
Additionally, the harms have an expressive function. Torture becomes the visible
manifestation of power; it makes the invisible regime visible. The harms are of the
sort that communicate that the perpetrator is superior to the victim, a superiority that
becomes the essential insignia of the regime. The crimes affect not only the victims
own sense of worth, but also the communitys sense of the inherent value of all its
110
citizens. The victims value and equality are denied. Patterns of harms misrepresent
value and reinforce belief in the wrong theory of value in the community.25
Making whole and balancing, then, the central metaphors used in revenge
and retribution, which are critical to any sense of justice, require a restoration of the
language that has been taken away, or a refilling of the void left when the ability
to use language was appropriated. The opportunity to tell ones own story, in ones
own words, with no restrictions on what may be said, is not something other than
justice; it is an essential component of justice.26 The necessity of correcting the false
message about the victims worth is likewise requisite to a society that seeks to
demonstrate its commitment to the inherent value of all its citizens. To do this with
the help of the victims, the victims regaining dignity and autonomy by correcting for
themselves the false message about their worth, seems far superior to the states
doing so without the active participation of the victims. The victims themselves,
with the support and acknowledgment of the state, repudiate the misrepresentation
that the regimes violence fostered.
STORIES AS WAYS OF DISCOVERING THE TRUTH
Richard Goldstone, a former chief prosecutor at the International Tribunal for the
Former Yugoslavia and now a judge on the South African Constitutional Court,
defines justice as finding out the truth.27 For many, the idea of a trial is equated with
the overall notion of justice. When we say we dont want revenge, we want
justice, we are saying, it seems to me, that we are willing to give over our passionate
feeling that some act is required in response to a wrong to a dispassionate, orderly,
state legal system, i.e., we want a trial. We have been carefully (and necessarily)
taught to channel our need for revenge into lawful procedures enacted by the state.
These procedures have, for a long time, been centred around trials. Thus justice
has come to mean a trial. When someone is brought to justice, he or she is brought
to trial. And if justice includes, as I think it does, a sense that the truth will be
revealed, a trial provides a dramatic enactment by which we are led to believe that
indeed we will or should learn the truth. The witnesses at least, if not all the actors in
the trial, purport to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. And
we do not proceed naively: everything that is said by a witness is subject to
challenge (cross-examination) and some lies uncovered. After some trials, we may
have at least a credible version of a story that we are willing to believe; after some
trials, the perpetrator is subject to punishment that feels, if not commensurate, at
least appropriate.
Yet because of the very procedures put in place to attempt to uncover the truth
and at the same time to protect the rights of the accused, even in situations that leave
us satisfied with the story and the punishment, we have at best what South African
Justice Albie Sachs calls microscopic truth, which is factual, verifiable and can
be documented.28 Another kind of truth, which Sachs calls dialogical truth, which
is social truth, truth of experience that is established through interaction,
discussion, and debate,29 may be given short shrift because of rigid procedures and
a false sense of closure after a trial. Thatt perpetrator and those victims may have
111
something akin to justice. But in situations faced by transitional democracies after

massive oppression, many perpetrators and victims will never enter a courtroom,
will never have an opportunity to tell or hear the truth. While a trial can name some
specific conduct as wrong and to some extent educate the citizenry about the nature
and extent of prior wrongdoing, it is focused in such a way so that the individual
wrongdoing may not be adequately put into the context of the practices and
ideologies of the oppressive regime. Many victims may have no official space in
which to tell the stories of the harms that befell them and no master narrative of
oppression emerges.
Rules of procedure, strictly observed, can impede open storytelling that might
reveal some larger more inclusive truth. What a witness or victim may say is
constrained. Most testimony about feelings, personal impact, or harms not entirely
relevant to the matter at hand is impermissible, and thereby goes unsaid. Under
diligent cross-examination, doubt may be cast on even a truthful witnesss story. If a
trial does reveal the truth about a perpetrator, it may not set the record straight about
other individuals who were hurt by the prior government; it will not get to those
stories at all.
It may be that allowing people to tell their stories free from the necessary
constraints of judicial process, in their own words with no threat of crossexamination, may yield far more universal truth than traditional retributive justice
procedures. Stories can, as Michael Ignatieff puts it, reduce the number of lies,30
and the reputations of both the living and the dead can be saved when the true stories
are revealed by multiple, even redundant, storytelling.
STORIES AS TRANSLATION, COMMUNICATION AND RECOGNITION
Stories enable citizens within a country to understand each other in ways that might
not otherwise be possible. In countries that are deeply divided culturally,
economically, politically, and otherwise, the sharing of personal narratives may be
the only means by which such diverse people can begin to understand each other.
An experience of pain or of the loss of a loved one crosses deep divides, and stories
of pain and loss can bridge gaps in experience and lead to empathetic understanding.
Stories solve the problem of how to translate knowing into telling, the problem of
fashioning human experience into a form assimilable to structures of meaning that
are generally human rather than culture-specific. We may not be able fully to
comprehend specific thought patterns of another culture, but we have relatively less
difficulty understanding a story coming from another culture, however exotic that
culture may appear to us.31 Events become translatable between and among people
who normally do not understand each other: narrative is a meta-code, a human
universal on the basis of which transcultural messages about the nature of shared
reality can be transmitted.32 When stories translate events into a shared language,
they arouse our emotions. We do not respond only with our logical minds; stories
move us to pity and compassion.33
Not only does narrative provide a means of translating from one culture to
another, it also provides a way of speaking for the disempowered. For those who
112
have been outsiders to a countrys power structure, narrative may be the only way
that they can express themselves to the powerful other. This experience of being
silenced by a power structure is what the philosopher Jean-Franois Lyotard calls
the differend.
d If one has been disempowered and victimized by a system of justice,
one experiences the differend, in which a common language does not exist by which
one can express ones sense of injury. A case of differendd between two parties
takes place when the regulation of the conflict that opposes them is done in the
idiom of one of the parties while the wrong suffered by the other is not signified in
that idiom.34 In practical terms, the differendd arises when a victim of political
oppression attempts to name the harm in the idiom of the oppressor, for whom it is
not a harm at all. A victim of apartheid, for example, has no legal language to name
the harm caused by that system. In the hegemonic legal language, there is no harm.
It cannot be named. Normal logical and legal systems of discourse, like foreign
languages to many victims, fail. Stories, though, can break through the differend and
provide a common language by which the less powerful can communicate with the
powerful (or formerly powerful)35 the nature of the harm that has befallen them. The
sometimes useless language of the law is put aside and one instead tells stories that
capture and transmit common human emotions such as pain, loss, separation,
desperation.
Moreover, the public act of storytelling can transcend the communicative
dimension; it can lead to both self and mutual recognition. In Ricoeurs words, the
simplest verbal expression requires an ear to receive it.36 As the person formerly
oppressed and harmed struggles to find words and meaning for her experience, the
attentive audience can witness the speakers full humanity.
STORYTELLING AS CARNIVAL
Russian literary theorist and philosopher, Mikhail Bakhtin, developed the concept of
carnivall in his studies of the work of Rabelais and Dostoevsky. Bakhtins literary
analysis takes seriously the celebration of the medieval carnival which celebrated
temporary liberation from the prevailing truth and from the established order, it
marked the suspension of all hierarchical rank, privileges, norms, and prohibitions. 37 Bakhtin saw the time of carnival in the Middle Ages and the
Renaissance as the peoples second life,38 in which the common people could
emerge from the routine of life and could temporarily be free from the existing
social structure. In the space of carnival, people were...reborn for new, purely
human relations[which were] not only a fruit of imagination or abstract thought;
they were experienced.39 Unlike entertainment, carnival is not a spectacle that is
performed by an elite few and observed by everyone else. Carnival provides an
alternative social space that allows the participation of all. Carnival has the
potentiality to open up and transform traditional, constrained spaces, and to allow
people to talk unguardedly and to be liberated from the forms and fears that might
restrain them. It is a space of freedom, abundance, and equality.
In addition to universal participation, carnival encourages free and familiar
contact among diverse people, a special type of communication not possible in
113
everyday life, in which physical and social distances between people are suspended, and constrained, coercive relations give way to ones based in freedom
and equality. Discourse also changes into carnival abuse or profanation, not directed
at persons but at practices and systems that oppress the people.
Bakhtin distinguishes carnival from official feasts, whether ecclesiastical, feudal,
or state-sponsored, which reinforced the existing world order rather than leading
people out of it. [T]he official feast looked back at the past and used the past to
consecrate the present [ ] [I]t asserted all that was stable, unchanging, perennial:
the existing hierarchy, the existing religious, political, and moral values, norms,
prohibitions. It was a triumph of a truth already established, the predominant truth
that was put forward as eternal and indisputable.40 Carnival, on the other hand, was
the feast of becoming, change, and renewal.41 Official feasts were a consecration
of inequality42 unlike carnival which broke down the barriers of caste, property,
profession, and age.
The freeing potentiality of carnival and this distinction that Bakhtin makes
between carnival and official feasts are helpful in thinking about the kinds of
settings in which the stories may be told. When the setting is a trial, as in an official
feast, the state is in charge and the people actors in the state drama. Rank is evident
and celebrated as the judges are robed and sit above the people. In trials, dignity and
reverence is accorded the court itself, and the victims are largely absent or
unimportant. What the people say and when they say it is constrained and controlled
by trial procedure and by the lawyers and judges.
By contrast, some storytelling settings, particularly those in South Africa, can
provide a carnivalesque healing of both storytellers and their audiences. In certain
circumstances, the storytelling setting can restore dignity to the victims, and
reverence may be accorded them. Storytelling settings, unlike trials, can invert the
normal rules of formal judicial procedure, and in displays akin to Bakhtins sense of
carnival, the official established order can be temporarily obliterated, along with all
the forms of terror, reverence, piety, and etiquette43 connected to it.
A shoe-throwing event at the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearing comes to mind as a precise example of the carnival possibilities
in storytelling settings. The mothers shrieking and throwing of the shoe at her sons
killer exemplifies the elevation of the profane in carnival, the bringing down to earth
of the legalistic and abstract. The mothers anger, pain, and hatred become visible
and acknowledged in a moment that would be impossible in formal trial-like
settings. Some storytelling settings, most notably those held in South Africa, offer
the hope of the destruction of the oppressive hierarchy and a renewal based upon a
new society capable of embracing and seeing the pain and oppression of others.
The carnival practice of full participation can likewise transform a less-than-free
society, in which participation depended upon wealth and status. It expands the
freedoms enjoyed by all the people of the state, such as the freedom to participate in
public discussions.44
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STORYTELLING AS SACRAMENTAL
Sacramentality may be defined as the belief that the visible, material elements of
the world can in fact reveal what would otherwise be the invisible divine
presence.45 Without this tangible presence in the world, this view holds, humans
would have no experience of an invisible God. Thus, it is of paramount importance
that grace that is otherwise invisible become concrete and accessible.46 The
discovering of the truth, then, is a means for making the invisible visible: that
which was shrouded in secrecy and terror must be made concrete and rendered part
of a countrys collective memory.47 In other words, the officially recognized truth
(in the form of a truth commission report) becomes a visible sign of a countrys new
aspirational norms; it is grace made visible.
My claim for the sacramental nature of this kind of storytelling takes a slightly
different form: that something sacramental occurs in the reclaiming of language
when a victim can remember and recite the story of what happened. The words take
on a sacramental sense in that they are used to remember, an act fraught with
psychological and historical consequences, and also to re-member, to pull together
the pieces of a victims symbolically dismembered self.
The metaphor of fragmentation, of being broken into pieces, of being
dismemberedd permeates the discussion of pain, violence, torture, suffering and
oppression: what is broken (shattered) is the experience of life, the construction
of vitality.48 With torture, an individual self is fragmented, ones voice is shattered
and then silenced. With oppression, family members are separated from each other;
the family unit is doubly dismembered. Other social units that could threaten the
power structure, such as political organizations and churches, are likewise
dismembered.
The symbolic and religious nature of dismemberment and re-membering is found
both in mythology and Christian religious ritual. In Egyptian mythology, for
example, after the body of Osiris was cut into pieces, his wife, Isis, undertook a long
and tedious search to gather up the pieces of his body. When she found them, she
remembered the body and buried it at Philae, a place which thereafter took on great
religious significance. A magnificent temple was erected at the place of remembering, to which the faithful made pilgrimages.49
In Catholicism, the sacrament of the Eucharist is a re-membering of Christ, in
which broken bread is transubstantiated into pieces of his body and wine into his
blood, a ceremony initiated by Jesus at the Last Supper, in which Jesus was
indicating that his disciples were to share in his sacrifice.50 The sacrament of the
Eucharist repeats this ceremonial meal, convinced that it [is doing] what Jesus
intended when he said: Do this in remembrance of me.51 The admonition Do this
is remembrance of me in the eucharistic ceremony is followed by the anamnesis
spoken by the people: We remember, we do this to commemorate you.52
Remembering pain, violence, and oppression, then, has an unavoidable double
meaning, in that the remembering and telling of the story carries with it the remembering of that which was fragmented. The ritualistic retelling in a group in a space
set aside for it symbolically allows for both sharing in the pain and putting the
pieces of a broken life back together. Given an official space in which to speak and
115
remember, shattered voices, lives, selves, families, communities and nations may be
re-membered.
But the process of story gathering is only part of what a truth commission does:
it also writes a report. The form that this report takes can also constitute a kind of
justice in the ways in which the report accounts for the past and the commitment it
makes to the future. It matters who finally gets to tell the overall story, the master
narrative, and it matters what form this narrative takes.
TRUTH REPORTS AS HISTORY, AS CONSTITUTIVE DOCUMENTS
Stories engage us emotionally as well as intellectually, compel us to anger, grief,
d at their best, force us to reflect on the social and political situation
terror, pity, and,
they present. They do not teach us, as many philosophical texts do, that the good
person is self-sufficient,53 best unmoved by the tragic events that occur, both to
oneself and to others. Instead, stories draw us in, challenge our autonomy, and make
us cognizant of our inevitable interconnectedness.
The form, then, that a text takes (whether philosophical discourse or a story, for
example) can supplement or contradict the values it espouses. The formal choices a
writer makes entail[s] ontological and epistemic choices with distinct ideological
and even specifically political implications.54 Accordingly, the formal choice that a
country makes to collect personal stories and to publish them, perhaps as part of
a larger, more general story, reflects a view of life, of politics, of what it means to be
a government, of who citizens are and should be. Paul Ricoeur compares victims
stories to those stories he calls epoch-making: the heroic stories that found or
reinforce a nations identity. [W]hat the epic did in the sphere of the admirable, the
story of victims does in the sphere of the horrible. Moreover, he suggests that
saving victims stories has a moral imperative: This almost negative epic preserves
the memory of suffering [] [T]here are crimes that must not be forgotten, victims
whose suffering cries less for vengeance then for narration.55
Clearly, a countrys examination of an oppressive past need not include personal
stories at all. A country could employ political scientists and philosophers to write
a general, abstract rendering of what occurred and why. If chosen, this abstract
theoretical style would make[s], like any other style, a statement about what is
important and what is not, about what faculties of the reader are important for
knowing and what are not.56 It would say that political abstractions are paramount,
that the particulars are less important, if at all. It would mean that it hopes to engage
its readers intellectual faculties, their minds, not their hearts.
On the other hand, the choice to include narratives says that individuals matter;
such a text refuses to generalize or to allow its readers to ignore the particulars.
It, frankly, rubs its readers noses in the particulars, especially if it allows the
personal stories to stand in the first person, thereby making the pain and misery
unavoidable for a reader. The choice to include narratives in a truth report
demonstrates that its writers want and require its readers to be moved, even
horrified; such a form disallows dispassionate distancing from the blood and gore of
the past. By presenting the stories of victims as worth sharing and reading, it tells us
116
that good citizens are not self-sufficient, autonomous individuals, but connected
members of a community who can empathize with each others pain.
The use of personal stories in a truth commission report, moreover, reflects
a kind of language that differs vastly from the discourse typically used in describing
acts of violence in war. In conventional war discourse, the individual human body
disappears and is replaced by generalities: Berlin is bombed (not thousands of
individual inhabitants of Berlin are killed and the structures in which they lived and
worked are destroyed).57 Instead of the usual depersonalized war rhetoric that in
many ways shields us from the horrific realities, the pain and deaths of individuals,
of actual people who could be (perhaps were) our neighbours, our friends, our
family, are emphasized by the inclusion of the verbatim stories as core parts of the
historical record.
The use of personal stories also can reflect a use of language that Mikhail
Bakhtin describes as polyphonic in his analysis of the novels of Dostoevsky.58
Instead of a monological text with a single unified authorial voice, some truth
reports, like Dostoevskys novels, allow for the inexhaustible complexity of
experience to be revealed in competing but fully weighted voices that the authorial
voice does not subsume or silence. The reports can represent a plurality of
unmerged consciousnesses, a mixture of valid voices not completely subordinate
to authorial intent or the heavy hand of the authorial voice.59
Thus, truth commission reports that include personal stories have captured the
imagination for a multiplicity of reasons. Prominent among these reasons is that
stories capture the emotional complexity of a brutal past in a way that other forms
of history may not. While it may be true in the final analysis that radical evil...
surpass[es] the boundaries of moral discourse,60 in that we do not have a
vocabulary or moral framework that can contain or even evaluate some kinds of evil
actions, we can allow accounts of them to be told by those who have endured them,
and we can force ourselves to listen to and acknowledge them. Stories do not force
historical closure upon the reality of pain and death; they account for but they do not
justify or excuse.
Truth commission reports write what we traditionally regard as history, of
course. They state a version of the facts as they occurred in a circumscribed past and
also interpret those facts. That is, they provide a plot61 that demonstrates (or
argues) cause and effect, what Hayden White calls emplotment.62 The reports are
thus themselves master narratives, that is, the reports impose a form of story on the
circumscribed events that they are charged to uncover. The events are not only
registered within the chronological framework of their original occurrencebut
[also] revealed as possessing a structure, an order of meaning, that they do not
possess as mere sequence.63
Certainly, historians have always played an important role in the work of truth
commissions. But the history contained within a truth commission report is not just
the story about that (former) state. It is also a constitutive history of this (emerging)
state. Who tells the nations story, writes its history, is an essential component of
power. The countries that emerge from a period of internal oppression and violence
experience an identity crisis. Because the oppressors have had the microphone,
that is, have had complete control of language and have thus constructed the national
117
master narrative, the new democratic state that emerges from the ashes of the old
state needs ways to reconstruct and rewrite the master narrative. One way that this
new narrative is written is through a truth report. As a transitional democracy
negotiates its new identity, that identity is not only contained within the report, but
is constituted by the very form of the report.
In other words, a state has a huge investment in controlling the kind of story that
is written, in shaping the master narrative. In Hegels view of history, any history
presupposes a state in whose interest events are recorded and narrated; the state
creates [history] as it creates itself.64 To have a full understanding of itself, a state
(and for Hegel, a state becoming an ideal state) must have a complete understanding
of its past. It must construct a master narrative because the identity of a group,
culture, people, or nation is not that of an immutable substance, nor that of a fixed
structure, but that, rather, of a recounted story.65 As we read the reports, which are
inevitably master narratives, we must ask, what story is being told here? What is the
master narrative? What kind of community is the report constituting? What does
the form of the report tell us about the kind of new country that is being founded?
About its ethical commitment to the future? About its vision of power?
The truth commission reports, then, represent an innovative kind of history.
Many of them include personal stories as salient and illustrative parts of the larger
story that comprises the truth commission report. The authoritative voice that one
inevitably experiences in reading a history, the voice that shapes events into a single
master narrative, is joined in these reports by the voices of the victims. It is still,
necessarily, a master narrative that looks to the past and speculates about reasons for
the oppression, and also looks to the future and promises change. But the inclusion
of the personal stories can produce a radically new kind of historical document in
two ways. First, the reports function as foundingg documents that reconstruct and
even invent the new political community. Their publication is a constitutive,
foundational moment in a nations history. The reports become documents that are
speech acts, bringing the new reformed state into being. Second, the reports provide
a way of unifying widely diverse people who have become even more alienated
from one another as a result of the violence and oppression. These people view the
state, quite reasonably, with suspicion and fear instead of being able to see the state
as a place where citizens, together, can aspire to higher things. As they tell the story
of the past in an unprecedented way (privileging personal narratives) the reports
invite people who have become fragmented individually and socially and alienated
from the state back into the community.
In a truth commission report, individuals tell personal stories, the commission
uses them and constructs the plot, the inevitable master narrative, and the two
together manifest a unique sharing of power reflecting the promise of democracy.
That the personal stories comprise a notable portion of the new history connotes that
the voices of the people are meaningful in the newly constituted country. The report
instantiates the moments of self and mutual recognition that are essential to the
flourishing and real freedoms of both the people and the country. A truth report,
with its core personal narratives, announces we hold these truths to be selfevident; it proclaims that it is published in a country in which such harms are
unacceptable, in which these voices can be heard and valued, and in which these
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stories can be acknowledged. We hold this truth to be henceforth self-evident. By its

very existence, such a report brings a new nation into being. And the well-being of
the new nation may be measured in part by the robust discourse in which its citizens
have engaged.
Teresa Godwin Phelps is a Professor of Law in the University of Notre Dame Law
School, USA.
NOTES
1
Brody, 2001: 27.

2
Sen, 1985: 4.
3
Nussbaum and Sen, 1993: 30.
4
Ricoeur, this volume: 2.
5
Ricoeur, 1994: 75.
6
Lewis Herman, 1992: 173-195; Ochberg, 1988.
7
Brison, 1999: 214-5.
8
Brison, 1999: 215. She cites J.L. Austins definition of speech acts as performative utterances: The
uttering of the sentence is...the doing of an action.....
9
10
Carr, 1986: 91.
11
Ricoeur, 1994: 31.
12
Fisher, 1987: 62.
13
Ricoeur, 1994: 65.
14
White, 1987: 9.
15
Barthes, 1987: 79.
16
MacIntyre, 1987.
17
Carr, 1986: 97.
18
That all victims feel healed is, of course, an over simple conclusion, as Priscilla Hayner wisely points
out. Some of those who testify feel re-traumatized, rather than experiencing their testifying as cathartic.
Post traumatic stress syndrome symptoms can result from testifying, and some people worry that their
testimony can result in acts of revenge from the people they name as perpetrators. Hayner recommends
that support networks, some of which already exist, be expanded to help victims after they testify. Talk
given on 30 March 2001 at Hesburgh Center, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN.
199
Minow, 1998: 66. Those who treat survivors of human rights abuses note that some survivors can
become trapped in the trauma story and need help in integrating the personal story into a larger picture.
20
Minow, 1998: 67.
21
Tutu, 1999: chapter 6.
22
Ricoeur, 1992: 140.
23
Minow, 1998: 4.
24
Scarry, 1985: 19.
25
Hampton, 1992: 1677.
26
Jacques Derrida defines justice as a relation or debt from one person to another and an incalculable
demand to treat the other on the others terms. Derrida convincingly maintains that [t]o address
oneself in the language of the other is, it seems, the condition of all possible justice., Derrida, 1992:
17. Thus even a trial, in which traditional notions of justice are enacted and perpetrators are punished,
falls short of full and adequate justice if victims have not been able to tell their stories, if their ability to
relate events in their own words has not been allowed (as it usually is not).
27
Goldstone, 1996: 491.
28
Sachs, cited on TRC Homepage www.truth.org.za/reading/beyond.htm. See also Sachs, 2002.
29
Ibid.
30
Ignatieff, 1996: 113.
31
White, 1987: 1.
32
Ibid.
33
119
Nussbaum, 1998: 99.

Lyotard, 1988: 9.
35
The idea that narratives provide a means by which an oppressed class can speak to the powerful has
taken hold in the American legal community in the discussion of outsider narratives, in the work of
such legal scholars as Patricia Williams, Richard Delgado, Mari Matsuda, Derrick Bell, and many
others.
36
37
Bakhtin, 1965: 10.
38
Ibid.: 8.
39
Ibid.: 10.
40
Ibid.: 9.
41
Ibid.: 10.
42
Ibid.
43
Bakhtin, 1984: 123.
44
Sen, 1999: 3.
45
Coonan, 1996: 544. Coonan cites to a definition provided by theologian Richard McBrien: No
theological principle or focus is more characteristic of Catholicism or more central to its identity than
the principle of sacramentality. The Catholic vision sees God in and through all things: other people,
communities, movements, events, places, objects, the world at large, the whole cosmos. The visible, the
tangible, the finite, the historicalall these are actual or potential carriers of the divine presence.
McBrien, 1980: 1180.
46
Coonan, 1996: 544.
47
Ibid.
48
Lifton, 1979: 179. Susan Brisons description of the trauma of rape discussed earlier also uses
metaphors of dismemberment and fragmentation.
49
Brody, 1970: 294.
50
McBrien, 1980: 821.
51
McBrien, 1980: 822.
52
Ibid., citing 1 Corinthians 11: 24-25.
53
Nussbaum, 1990: 17.
54
White, 1987: ix.
55
Ricoeur, 1994: 188-9.
56
Nussbaum, 1990: 7.
57
Scarry, 1985: 60ff.
58
Bakhtin, 1984.
59
Bakhtin, 1984: 24.
60
Nio, 1996: ix.
61
The notion of plot comes from Aristotles Poetics. Plot is a combination of temporal succession and
causality. E.M. Forster explained it this way: The king died and then the queen died is a story. The
king died, and then the queen died of grief is a plot. Forster, 1927.
62
Emplotment is what is employed when one writes a full-fledged historical narrative, a coherent
emplotment linking beginning, middle, and end within a specific framework of interpretation.
Friedlander, 1992: 6.
63
White, 1987: 5. White differentiates between narratives and annals and chronicles, two other
possibilities for the representation of historical reality. Annals consist of a list of events in
chronological sequence. The chronicle, while it may wish to tell a story, usually fails to do so because it
lacks narrative closure. It does not so much conclude as simply terminate. It starts out to tell a story
but breaks off in medias res [.]; it leaves things unresolved. Ibid.
64
Hegel, 1988: 64. A country that is in the process of shaping itself [] produces an intelligent and
definite record of (and interest in) actions and events whose results are lasting. Ibid.: 65.
65
Ricoeur, 1995: 7.
34
120

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Former Torturers Accountable, Fordham International Law Journall 20 (512)
Derrida, Jacques (1992), Force of Law: The Mystical Foundation of Authority, D. Cornell,
M. Rosenfeld and D. Gray Carlson, eds, Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice, New York:
Routledge
Fisher, Walter R. (1987), Human Communication As Narration: Toward a Philosophy of Reason, Value,
and Action, Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press
Forster E. M. (1927), Aspects of the Novel, New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co
Friedlander, Saul. Ed. (1992), Probing the Limits of Representation: Nazism and the Final Solution,
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press
Goldstone, Richard (1996), Justice As a Tool for Peace-Making: Truth Commissions and International
Criminal Tribunals, N.Y.U. Journal of International Law and Policyy 28.485
Hampton, A. (1992), Correcting Harms Versus Righting Wrongs: The Goal of Retribution, UCLA Law
Review 39 (1659)
Ignatieff, Michael (1996), Articles of Faith, Index on Censorship (5)
Hegel, G. W. F. (1988), Introduction to the Philosophy of History: With Selections from a Philosophy of
Right, Trans. Leo Rauch. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett
Lewis Herman, Judith (1992), Trauma and Recovery, New York: Basic Books
Lifton, Robert Jay (1979), The Broken Connection: On Death and the Continuity of Life, New York:
Simon & Schuster
Lyotard, Jean-Franois (1988) The Differend: Phrases in Dispute, Minneapolis, MN: University of
Minnesota Press
MacIntyre, Alasdair (1987), How to be a North American, Lecture to the National Conference of State
Humanities Councils, Chicago, 14 November
McBrien, Richard (1980), Catholicism. Minneapolis, MN: Winston
Minow, Martha (1998), Between Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing History After Genocide and Mass
Violence, Boston: Beacon Press
Nio, Carlos Santiago (1996), Radical Evil on Trial, New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press
Nussbaum, Martha (1990), Loves Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature, New York: Oxford
University Press
Nussbaum, Martha (1998), Rational Emotion, Paul J. Heald, ed., Literature and Legal Problem
Solving, Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press
Nussbaum, Martha and Amartya Sen, eds. (1993), The Quality of Life, Oxford: Clarendon Press
Ochberg, Frank M., ed. (1988), Post-Traumatic Therapy and Victims of Violence, New York: Bruner/Mazel
Ricoeur, Paul (1992), Oneself As Another, Trans. Kathleen Blamey, Chicago: University of Chicago Press
_______ (1994), Time and Narrative, Vol. 1, Trans. K. McLaughlin and D. Pellauer, Chicago: University
of Chicago Press
Ricoeur, Paul (1995), Reflections on a New Ethos for Europe, Philosophy and Social Criticism 21(516)
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Scarry, Elaine (1985), The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World,
d New York: Oxford
University Press
Sen, Amartya (1985), Commodities and Capabilities, Netherlands: Elsevier Science Publishers
Sen, Amartya (1999), Development As Freedom, New York: Anchor Books
Tutu, Desmond (1999), No Future Without Forgiveness, London: Rider
White, Hayden (1987), The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation,
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press
CHAPTER 7
JEAN-MICHEL BONVIN AND NICOLAS FARVAQUE
PROMOTING CAPABILITY FOR WORK

The Role of Local Actors
INTRODUCTION
This chapter advocates a capability perspective, drawing on Amartya Sens works,
for analysing and designing contemporary social policies aimed at tackling social
exclusion from the labour market. We will analyse the relevance of the capability
approach as an alternative framework for critical assessment of public structures in
the field of social integration policies, as well as a framework for action and reform
when such structures appear unjust.
Sens framework has inspired many people in academic audiences as well as in
activist or political spheres.1 The relevance of the capability approach, which first
emerged as an alternative approach for the study of poverty in developing countries,
has been aptly underlined for developed economies as well.2 The perspective of
development as freedom,3 which aims at enhancing peoples real freedoms
through public action, should equally apply to developed countries, as is evidenced
by the high levels of unemployment, poverty and social exclusion experienced by
rich countries, in particular in Europe.4 Many studies have developed this capability
or freedom perspective with regard to the situation of the poorest in rich countries,
highlighting what a capability framework would entail. In particular, some of them
have emphasised the alternative cognitive potential of the capability approach in
the field of work and social policies. Works inspired by the capability approach have
facilitated the measurement of social exclusion and poverty with a renewed basis of
judgement, leading to alternative ways of identifying the poor and the excluded.5
These studies showed that a significant proportion of poor people in terms of
capabilities are not being helped by public institutions, for they do not appear in
official commodity-based accountings. Similar observations concerning the labour
market show that standard measures of unemployment, i.e. based on standard
informational bases of judgement in justice (henceforward IBJJ) are totally blind
to the limitations faced by job-seekers. By contrast, a pool of studies inspired by the
capability approach have identified the constraints,6 unfreedoms 7 or penalties8 jobless
people suffer in different parts of Europe. A study has shown that, for contemporary
Britain, nearly three-quarters of women who are not in paid employment lack
121
122
employment capability, that is, face severe constraints vis--vis employment

opportunities.9 The very problem is that, according to Burchardt, only one out of
three unemployed women is picked up in official unemployment statistics. If public
action relies on this standard measure, then a large majority of capability-missing
persons will not be considered as relevant targets.
The choice of the IBJJ is not neutral for the way public policies are designed and
implemented. Indeed, it implies a selection of specific factual data or information
which is then considered as the adequate yardstick for public evaluation and action.
This data selection coincides with the exclusion, explicit or not, of other information
seen as irrelevant.10 The narrow link between the IBJJ mobilised for public
evaluation and the content and objectives of public action is thus evidenced.
Integrating capabilities in the IBJJ brings about deep-seated consequences for
social integration policies. If contemporary social policies can certainly all be said to
share a common ambition to enhance peoples possibilities and opportunities on
the labour market, not all of them can be considered as equally capability-friendly.
The capability framework requires assessing the precise significance and impact of
these policies in terms of functionings and capabilities. In substantial terms, the
priority of public action is then to ensure that everyone can effectively have the
capability to achieve functionings that are conventionally recognised as valuable,
typically the capability to get a valuable job. Another crucial issue relates to the
procedure through which social integration policies are being designed,
implemented and assessed: are these policies controlled from above by technocrats
seeking to impose predetermined functionings on benefit recipients, or is their
content deliberated between all local actors involved, including job-seekers? The
two options lead to contrasted
c
results in terms of capabilities. Hence, at both
substantial and procedural levels, the capability approach allows the raising of
critical issues about contemporary transformations of social policies (especially the
introduction of the language of opportunity and of rights and duties approaches)
and acts as a normative framework against which such policies can be assessed.11
The use of the capability approach also questions the impact of the constraints
imposed on the recipients by the public services: do they really improve their
prospects in terms of capabilities? In all these matters, the choice of the capability
IBJJ makes a huge difference.
Our argumentation will develop along the following lines. We first briefly recall
the main concepts of the capability framework and propose the extension of the
capability approach to the general issue of the conversion of all formal rights into
real rights or capabilities. We then apply this extended capability approach to the
critical notion of capability for work. The combined significance of process and
opportunity freedom as well as of individual and social responsibility is underlined.
The following three sections elaborate a critical analysis of contemporary social
policies against the capability for work framework. Social Policies, Cash
Benefits and the Capability Approach envisages the politics of decommodification
(providing people outside the labour market with cash benefits). Training
Programmes, Employability and Human Capital is devoted to human capital
approaches to social integration policies (programmes making job-seekers more
employable via training mechanisms), and finally, Workfare, Peoples Behaviour
123
and the Uses of Constraint focuses on workfare policies (constraining unemployed

people back into work). All these developments show the difficulty of determining
what would be the best IBJJ for contemporary social policies; indeed, individual
circumstances and local situations have to be taken into account, something which
forbids the definition of any universal social integration policy. Under such
conditions, it is of the utmost importance to leave as much autonomy as possible to
the local actors, including job-seekers. Our next section is devoted to this crucial
issue, namely that of ensuring the conditions of equal and effective capability for
voice. Our final section addresses the concrete consequences of capability for voice
in the case of local employment agencies. A new research agenda with deep-seated
consequences for local public action is suggested.
PUBLIC ACTION, REAL RIGHTS AND CAPABILITIES
The capability approach is a framework that may be used, both in practice and
normatively, to assess issues related to living standards, poverty, quality of life,
well-being, or agency. It encompasses both the assessment of individuall situations,
trajectories and potentialities, and the efficiency and fairness of sociall structures and
arrangements. Its potential reach is thus very large.
According to Sens capability approach, human well-being should be assessed
with an enriched informational basis of judgement in justice, not reduced to
monetary assets (as in poverty line measures of poverty) or to a bunch of
commodities (or primary goods or resources, as in Rawls and Dworkins accounts
of justice), nor to the mainstream economists subjective utility-based measure
(which is not enough to measure real deprivation, and does not protect against the
issue of adaptive preference to lasting poverty). By contrast, the capability approach
proposes that individual assessment should be concerned with what the persons are
actually capable of being and doing, i.e. their capability. In Sens words, actual
achievements are called functionings and are the components of a worthwhile life if
they are considered as valuable. Potential achievements are identified as the
capability set of a person and represent her real freedom to do and to be. When
assessing the well-being or agency of a person, capabilities should be the focal
point: indeed, the same functioning (e.g. not eating) may be the result of constraint
(starving) or of choice (fasting), and focusing on functionings does not allow to
capture this crucial difference. This implies that the development of capabilities is to
be envisaged as the objective of all public policies: Sen does not want to impose
outcomes (or functionings)12 but to provide the adequate environment for the
development of capabilities, or real freedom of choice.
In his studies on economic development, Sen stressed the necessity of achieving
some basic capabilities, such as being free from disease or hunger, or the capability
of participating effectively in democratic processes. This, he showed, is not a matter
of individual responsibility but a duty of the State; though the expected outcome, in
terms of achievements and freedom to achieve, is individual. Theoretically, social
institutions, and thus in an important place the State, have the duty of restoring and
124
enhancing capability sets. Economic facilities provided by the market should be seen
as a sort of instrumental freedom, but they cannot be separated out from the
development of social opportunities and protective security, which are other kinds of
instrumental freedoms to be guaranteed to people. Sen calls this a many-sided
approach,13 and no doubt it has relevance for the analysis of contemporary
employment policies.
The capability set of a person depends on her entitlements and commodities (all
goods and services that are available to her, be they offered or not in the market,
exchangeable or not against money), and on her capability to convert them into
valuable functionings.14 Thus, entitlements and commodities form the material basis
of the capability set, even if they are not enough to guarantee the development of
capabilities. In matters of social policy and social security, [t]he entitlement of a
person also includes what can be obtained through claims against the State, e.g. the
entitlement to unemployment benefit (if the person fails to find a job), or to social
subsidy (if his income falls below a certain minimum figure).15 The delivery of
such entitlements or social rights either through direct monetary transfers or
services in kind, has been the rationale of welfare states during the post-war period.
In the spirit of the capability approach however, public action ought not to stop
after this delivery, and should aim at providing a capability-friendly social context,
helping every individual to enjoy the real freedom to convert her command over
commodities into valuable beings and doings. Put differently, the very point of the
capability approach is to focus on the conversion factors allowing the translation
of formal rights and formal freedoms into capabilities. Conversely, the capability
approach also requires a struggle against obstructive factors such as the lack of
available jobs or infrastructure that impede the appropriate conversion of
commodities or any form of individual capital (be it income or competencies) into
capabilities.
In such an ambitious perspective, commodities or entitlements have a substantial
importance, but they clearly remain derivative on capabilities.16 Therefore the
capability approach requires the combining of the guarantee of entitlements or
commodities and the setting up of adequate conversion factors. This is the reason
why attention should not be paid only to commodities or entitlements and their
conversion into functionings, but more broadly to the conversion of all formal rights
(rights enshrined in legal provisions providing no guarantee about their effective
enforcement) into capabilities. The following figure evidences the enlarged scope of
the capability approach, by contrast with strictly monetary approaches to poverty
focusing on commodities and cash entitlements.17
Punto interesante. Tsl ves en el analisis

de estturctura q propongo seria
imoortante anadir (mas adelante) como
elemento a analizar los fsctores de
conversion sobre lo s aue actua la
polticas pblicas. Cuales? De que tipo
son? Tal ves en esto puede ayudar a
guiar las estrategias usadas y tambien
los tipos de herrsmientas segun Hook

Individual
entitlement
Vector of
commodities
= Means to achieve
125
Individual capability
set
Personal AND social

AND environmental
conversion factors
Vectors of
functionings
One vector of
achieved functioning
Choice
= Freedom to achieve
= Achievement
Figure 1. From entitlements and commodities to achieved functionings
Figure 1 illustrates the impact of the choice of the IBJJ. It clearly indicates that
the possession of a certain amount of commodities only acts as a means to achieve,
but this cannot be regarded as a guarantee of real freedom. The possession of
a bicycle is only a means to some ends, e.g. moving or even having fun.18 If the
capability to move or to have fun requires the possession of a bicycle (through a
prior purchase on the market, a loan by a relative, a provision by public services
etc.), it above all requires the possibility of converting this means into an end. Here
the focus is on personal, social and environmental factors which may impinge or
facilitate the conversion of means into freedoms. If social norms impede women
from making use of a bicycle, or if streets are not adequately equipped, or if the
owner of a bicycle is unable to use it because of a physical handicap, then
conversion is highly constrained, if not impossible.
Thus, each factor of conversion envisaged alone will not favour adequate
translation into capabilities. In the field of social integration policies, individual
competencies without appropriate infrastructure or available jobs do not improve
capabilities, just as the plentiful availability of high-tech jobs does not improve
individuals capability sets if personal factors of conversion are absent. The main
contribution of the capability approach is not simply to show the inadequacy of a
monetary or income approach in terms of capabilities, but to insist on the necessity
of bridging the gap between formal rights and freedoms on one hand and capabilities
and real freedoms on the other. This requires the combined setting up of all three
conversion factors, as well as the universal availability of appropriate quantities of
commodities and entitlements. In between formal rights or freedoms (that are but
theoretical possibilities as Marxs critique has aptly demonstrated) and functionings,
Sen introduces what may be labelled as capability-rights providing real, effective
(and not formal) possibilities of choice. Cash or in-kind benefits are not envisaged as
ends in themselves, but as instrumental to the development of capabilities. In such a
perspective, the purpose of public policies is not to guarantee functionings, but real
rights and freedoms to choose a life course and to achieve functionings one has
reason to value. Indeed, and this is one of its main strengths in our view, Sens
perspective does not aim to guarantee outcomes, but to create the appropriate social
and environmental conditions in order to develop the real freedom to choose the life
one has reason to value. In such a perspective, social integration policies do not
126
strive to shape individual choices and behaviours; they rather act as facilitators of
such choices. The informational basis of justice of the capability approach aims at
giving real freedom of choice. As such it is a procedural IBJJ which excludes all
possibilities of imposing substantial contents on individuals.
Such a focus on capabilities then implies a deep-seated reform of the traditional
welfare state, with the double ambition of preserving social rights (the access to
commodities and entitlements), and of facilitating the translation of all formal rights
and freedoms (to be understood very broadly as all the commodities available to the
individual in terms of income, human capital, and other kinds of resources) into
capabilities or real freedoms. Social structures, such as legislative provisions, public
institutions and infrastructures, as well as all public policies and interventions in the
field of the labour market and social security, play a crucial part in this perspective.
Indeed, the role of institutions is to focus on individual possibilities of conversion of
commodities and all other resources into capabilities. The next section applies this
general perspective to the issue of work, asking, what exactly does capability for
work entail?
CAPABILITY FOR WORK
Paraphrasing Sen, capability for work is the real freedom to choose the work one
has reason to value. It is therefore recognised that work may be a disutility in
certain cases, something one has no reason to value. The capability approach
requires that all people be adequately equipped to escape from the constraint of
valueless work, either through the real possibility of refusing such a job (with a
valuable alternative, be it a financial compensation or another job), or through the
possibility of transforming it into something one has reason to value. Thus,
capability for work implies either a) capability not to work if one chooses to (via a
valuable exit option);19 or b) capability to participate effectively in the definition of
the work content, organisation, conditions, modes of remuneration, etc. (the voice
option).
Capability for work does not however imply the disappearance of all constraints.Como en el caso de "adquirir un oficio" de
ley de accidentes porque la persona
On the contrary, it recognises that the opportunity set is necessarily limited andlapuede
no querer o lreferir tener un
constrained, but it advocates a fair and negotiated construction of this constraint.beneficio
The existence of a valuable exit option, like decent unemployment benefits, is the
very foundation of the capacity to negotiate the constraints connected to work, rather
than accept any conditions imposed by the employer. In this framework, labour law
and social security are not only mechanisms set up to protect the workers and the
unemployed: they are also the sine qua non conditions of capability-friendly jobs.
Both unemployment benefits (making the exit option valuable) and consistent labour
law provisions (that make the voice option something else than wishful thinking) are
needed in this perspective. Indeed, market transactions alone are not able to
guarantee capability for work. Law is needed to promote a smooth and fair
functioning of the market economy: if the definition of the constraints imposed on
workers is not left to one partner, but is taken up as a collective duty by the State or
by the social partners, then the voice option of all partners to the labour contract is
127
not reduced to a remote and abstract possibility and the definition of the constraints
attached to work is not conceived of as a unilateral prerogative of the employer. Sen
frequently insists on the use of social choice procedures in order to determine what
combination of freedom and constraint will prevail: the necessity of constraints
is recognised in the capability approach, but it is built through the effective
participation and deliberation of all concerned people.
Capability for work is obviously a freedom-based notion, which is directly
concerned with the process and opportunity aspects of freedom.20 On the one hand,
processual freedom entails the active participation of all partners involved. In the
case of employment policies, this implies that all actors ( job-seekers, civil officers,
trade unions, employers, etc.) are allowed to take part effectively in the designing
and implementing processes of labour market policies. In this perspective, payment
of social benefits is not enough to guarantee the capability for voice, defined as the
ability to express ones opinions and thoughts and to make them count in the course
of public discussion. The logic of processual freedom requires that the agency
dimension of the persons concerned (all of them, including job-seekers) is mobilised.
They are to be active partners in the public policy process. However, focusing
exclusively on processual freedom, that is, on capability for voice alone, might bring
about perverse side-effects. The exclusive insistence on individual active
participation may coincide with a retreat of social agency,21 which could result
in turn in hypertrophying individual responsibility, the whole burden of finding a
valuable job lying then on the job-seekers shoulders. In order to avoid this, fair
structures and institutions are to be set up. The guarantees provided by social rights
and entitlements are crucial in this respect.
On the other hand, opportunities matter, and the content of the capability set very
much depends on the value of each of its components. The opportunity set must be
as inclusive and as attractive as possible, and this is indeed the task of social
agency. Capability for work cannot be reduced to a restricted view of employment
policy (aiming at improving all job-seekers employability), but also implies the
shaping of the social context in order to make it more professionally and socially
inclusive. In other words, employability without corresponding employment does
not make sense in a capability perspective. This makes a huge difference with
mainstream human capital approaches.
If one turns to the substantial content of capability for work, a plurality of
informational bases is available with regard to peoples expectations vis--vis work.
From a theoretical point of view, one can distinguish between two approaches: See
Sen, 1985b the agency and the well-being approach. Sen has often drawn on these
two perspectives in order to get some kind of an ideal-typical depiction of human
flourishing and motives for action. Agency is about doing, whatever the goals one
has reason to promote, be they connected to ones well-being or not. Well-being,
one might then say, is more about being and having; in this perspective, according to
Sen, the person should be seen as a beneficiary, whose interest and advantages
have to be considered.22 Thus, in order to define capability for work in terms of
well-being, one has to depict more precisely the types of interest or advantages
linked to work: either material well-being (mainly income), or non-material well-
128
being, or more broadly the social values connected to work, e.g. self-fulfilment,
personal development and social belonging. In addition, both kinds of advantage
material well-being and the social values of work may have a different impact on
peoples agency, which according to Sen boils down to a concrete participation in
economic, social and political actions, varying from taking part in the market to
being involved, directly or indirectly, in individual or joint activities in political and
other spheres.23
This multi-level distinction is of particular significance for the study of changes
in the expectations linked to work. The labour contract prevailing in the golden age
of welfare coincides with a specific conception of the employment relationship, in
which workers exchange subordination inside the firm for security, like protection
against risks connected to life (such as maternity, illness or age) and to work
(especially unemployment or industrial accidents). Employment appears as a
disutility to be compensated for and acceptance of subordination depends on the
existence and adequacy of such compensations.24 The main objective is material
well-being and the social values of work feature as a remote concern. What matters
is the capability of getting a well-paid and well compensated job. By contrast, work
may be considered as a way to realise oneself and get social recognition. Then the
accent shifts from material well-being to the social values connected to work, to its
quality or attractiveness. In this perspective, work is not conceived of as a disutility
to be adequately compensated for, but as a way to realise oneself through the
fabrication of valuable, and recognised as such, products or services. In terms of
employment policies, this distinction is very significant. Whereas the level of
compensation provided by social security benefits, is the main concern in the first
instance, the upgrading of competencies becomes a priority in the second case. The
aim is to make all job-seekers and workers the genuine agents of their professional
lives and trajectories and no longer the patients of welfare programmes. In other
words, work is assessed more directly against the yardstick of its contribution to
agency. Capability for work is not identified as the mere possibility of getting an
adequate wage: it focuses on the agency dimension, on the capability of
participating in society. In terms of well-being, the non-material aspects of work are
particularly emphasised and depicted as freedoms workers enjoy or wish to enjoy.
Thus a plurality of informational bases is available to define the substance of
capability for work and the capability approach does not privilege one option over
the others, quite the contrary. Furthermore, the capability approach is not reduced to
issues related to work. It entails a broader view of the agency dimension, combining
capability for work and capability for life.25 The picture gets still more complex
when these other dimensions of well-being and agency are taken into account.
Indeed, even valuable jobs may lead to undesired work intensification if they
prevent other activities linked to leisure, family life, etc. In the same way, a high
level of compensation may coexist with a low capability set, e.g. when the social
and environmental conversion factors are not adequately provided. Capability for
work needs to be defined in connection with all components of the capability set.
But this very process, the one of defining the meaning and scope of capability for
129
work, is a matter of social choice to be settled in a context-specific way and not in

absolute or universal terms.
The following sections focus on social entitlements and assess them against the
capability approach: do they really promote the enhancement of the beneficiaries
capability for work? Do they focus on commodities (entitlements), capabilities or
functionings? To what extent does public action rely on diverging informational
bases regarding peoples advantages (material well-being or social values attached
to work) and capability of realising ones goals (agency)? Our analysis will
concentrate specifically on three categories of social policies: a) cash benefits, b)
human capital and employability approaches, c) workfare and the issue of legitimacy
in the use of constraint.
SOCIAL POLICIES, CASH BENEFITS AND THE CAPABILITY APPROACH
Our presentation will focus on cash benefits envisaged as a tool of decommodification which are crucial in the availability of the exit option. A generous welfare
state is often considered as a sufficient condition for guaranteeing capability for
work and capability for voice. This assertion is put to the test in the following
paragraphs.
In the perspective of decommodification, the informational basis concentrates on
the individuals material well-being. Providing cash benefits to people without jobs
is considered to be the appropriate public action to guarantee their well-being.
Factors of conversion, which are central to Sens capability approach, are left aside,
in the same way as are all aspects connected to the agency dimension. The focus
is on entitlements, that is, on the means, goods and services necessary to achieve a
certain standard of living. The foundations of this somewhat resourcist approach
to social policy neglect the high range of factors interfering in the conversion of
such commodities into well-being (cf. supra and figure 1). Personal characteristics
such as health, sex, or intelligence impact on the quantity and quality of well-being
someone can draw from a given amount of money. Social characteristics such as
social norms and conventions, or discrimination based on gender, race or any kind
of prejudice, also play a crucial role with regard to the conversion of a certain
amount of money. Environmental characteristics, including infrastructures and
public institutions, also may impinge on or facilitate the conversion of commodities
into well-being. Completing social policies based on decommodification with
adequate macroeconomic policies to raise the number of available jobs can certainly
solve the problems connected with environmental conversion factors. However, the
issues related to personal and social characteristics remain. Indeed, giving money to
people (via the cash welfare state) and insuring the availability of jobs will not
guarantee that personal and social characteristics are duly taken into account. Of
course, some of those characteristics are beyond the individuals control, but action
may still be taken to adapt others (e.g. skills) or to modify the social context in the
sense of non-discrimination. To act only at the macro level implies the keeping of all
130
individual and social dimensions outside the scope of public action, and therefore
the neglect of a major category of factors of conversion.
The informational relevance of the capability approach is to consider the real
possibilities offered to people via the combination of social entitlements and public
action over factors of conversion. By contrast with the various versions of
resourcism, the capability approach puts the yardstick of assessment on people
themselves and on their real freedoms, and not only on the amount of resources
(re)distributed. This informational move from commodities to capabilities
supports the claim towards individualising social policies. At the same time, Sen is
aware of the dangers of individualised policies: social control and arbitrariness may
easily come about, especially if such action is taken up by discretionary local
authorities. As he puts it about targeting practices in anti-poverty policies, In
general, there is no way of targeting specific deprivations without a corresponding
informational invasion.26 The challenge here is to assess to what extent individual
characteristics can legitimately be integrated in the welfare state process. Obviously,
this could imply undue intrusion into the private sphere and abusive constraints on
individual behaviours (see infra), which illustrates the centrality of processual
freedom in these matters.
Alongside the issue of conversion factors, one should mention the restricted
approach to work conveyed by policies oriented towards decommodification. Cash
benefits relate to the material well-being dimension of capabilities (to the amount of
commodities provided) but in no way do they include the aspects connected to
agency. Such decommodification policies do not envisage the benefit recipient as an
actor. Nevertheless, this does not imply that she is reduced to the status of passive
beneficiary: it rather means that the agency dimension is considered to be a matter of
individual responsibility in which public policies do not interfere. Thus, so-called
decommodifying social policies envisage work as a source of income and not as a
way of self-fulfilment. In such a perspective, the impact on individual capabilities
varies significantly according to the amount of the benefits and to the availability of
adequate factors of conversion: generous cash benefits combined with adequate
factors of conversion usually result in a greater capacity for initiative and for
negotiating the job content. On the other hand, reduction of cash benefits with the
objective of making the exit option less attractive often results in lasting social
exclusion. The voice option is facilitated in the first case while it is very much
obstructed in the second one. To sum up, cash benefits are necessary to open up
capability-friendly avenues, but agency may still be impeded if individual, social
and environmental factors are not duly taken into account.
The present trend towards activating social policies is an answer to the failure of
the cash welfare state to promote the agency dimension. We now turn to the discussion
of this issue.
TRAINING PROGRAMMES, EMPLOYABILITY AND HUMAN CAPITAL
Active programmes often focus on the necessity of upgrading peoples
employability, thereby considering skill improvement and training programmes as
Justificacion para esto?
131
the adequate tool to develop capability for work. These approaches are usually
grouped under the general label of activation (e.g. active labour market policies,
active welfare state, etc.), which designates the transformation of passive benefits
into active ones (benefits aimed at facilitating the return into work). The next pages
assess the tools and rationale of activation against the capability framework.
The theoretical framework for todays active labour market policies, especially
in Europe, boils down to the idea of enhancing peoples employability.
Decommodification is no longer identified as the main goal of social policy and
tends to give way to what is often labelled as recommodification. The new
rationale of social policies, conveyed by these new instruments, is to improve
peoples ability to integrate in the labour market rather than to protect them from the
market as used to be the case through decommodification. This approach is centred
on the individual, whose capacities are first assessed and then adapted in order to
make her regain competitiveness in the labour market. The aim is fully to exploit the
productive potential of the working age population. At the micro level, then, such
policies strive to make job-seekers more adapted to the demand for labour. At the
macro level, positive effects of a growth in the stock of human capital are expected
in terms of improved economic competitiveness.
The shift of the informational basis of social policies towards employability lies
at the core of the European Employment Strategy, which was designed in 1997 in
order to co-ordinate national social and employment policies in the EU.27 However,
it has been translated in very diverse ways and at different paces according to the
countries.28 The most contemporary versions of this notion have been labelled
initiative employability and interactive employability.29 The former, initiative
employability, considers that the person, namely the job-seeker, holds the
responsibility for her own trajectory in the labour market. In such a model, people
are responsible for their professional integration and are called to become risk-takers
and managers of their own careers. By contrast, interactive employability
envisages individual trajectories as embedded in a local environment that may act
as a factor favouring or impeding empowerment. The concept of interactive
employability entails an enlargement of the scope of public action. If it maintains the
emphasis on individual initiative, it fully integrates the dimension of social
responsibility into the issue of providing adequate social and environmental
conversion factors. In such a design of employability, a plurality of actors state,
regional councils, non-profit sector, firms, etc. are actively involved in the
provision of an adequate opportunity set. This is for instance the very idea at the
core of transitional labour markets.30
In line with the capability approach, the notion of employability actually focuses
on the development of individual potential mainly with regard to employment
rather than on actual functionings or behaviours. This proximity between the
employability and capability approaches calls for comparison of the two IBJJs and
their different versions. We argue that not all employability policies are capabilityfriendly. In particular, policies oriented towards initiative employability that are
clearly prevalent nowadays, do not qualify as capability for work. Indeed, some
changes are required to bridge the gap between initiative employability and
132
capability, especially with regard to complementing action over individual human

capital with the setting-up of capability-friendly labour market institutions. In the
absence of such a capability-friendly institutional environment, human capital risks
being endowed with nothing but formal rights. Indeed, a highly competent jobseeker in a depressed area or in a deregulated economy will find it very difficult
to translate his employability into valuable employment. In the first instance, the
availability of jobs will be very scarce, whereas in the second case there may be
plenty of jobs but of very poor value. Thus, focusing on individual employability
without providing the conditions for making meaningful employment available boils
down to creating a modern and well-educated version of Marxs reserve army.
Though it has some proximity with the capability approach, the notion of human
capital remains entangled in the pitfalls of initiative employability. The
similarities between the two approaches relate to the focus placed on individual
abilities, identified as capabilities on the one hand, as human capital on the other.
The choice of words is not neutral, for it points to different IBJJ. The human capital
approach insists on peoples agency in terms of improvement of their productive
potential, whereas for the capability approach, agency stems from different
motivations, regarding all the real choices people have.31 Sen indeed distinguishes
between, on the one hand, human capital approaches envisaging man as a productive
tool, whose competitiveness should be improved in order to increase GDP and
economic prosperity, and, on the other hand, capabilities primarily concerned with
human development and the viewing of economic competitiveness as a means
towards this encompassing goal. Moreover, capabilities stress the necessity of a twoway relationship between individual and social responsibility, while human capital
puts the whole burden of professional reintegration on the individual. In this latter
perspective, the impact of labour market institutions (such as labour law concerning
working conditions, wages, etc. as well as the availability of jobs) on the individual
capability set still remains decisive. Indeed, if no jobs or only bad quality jobs are
available, and if at the same time job-seekers are compelled to go back to the labour
market as quickly as possible, then the improvement of individual human capital
will not coincide with enhanced capability. John Muellbauer convincingly argues
that, clearly, the capability set would be judged to be rather different if a high level
of leisure is enforced by the lack of work opportunity rather than freely chosen in
the presence of work opportunities.32 In such cases, capabilities are confused with
skills and competence (S-capabilities),33 thus neglecting the other dimension of
capabilities (O-capabilities referring to the extension and quality of the opportunity
set). If envisaged alone, the development of human capital does not act as a factor of
conversion of commodities into capabilities, but may be considered as a formal right
just like other commodities (cf. figure 1). By contrast, interactive employability or
transitional labour markets present striking similarities with the capability approach.
However, their practical significance remains marginal, since the European Employment Strategy clearly builds on classical human capital approaches.
133
WORKFARE, PEOPLES BEHAVIOUR AND THE USE OF CONSTRAINT

Instead of enhancing skills, active labour market policies may be used to constrain
people back into work what is usually referred to as workfare policies. In this
case, the issue is not that of failing competencies, but of ethics: people are morally
compelled to get a job, whatever its quality or remuneration might be. According to
a recent international survey, the evaluation of the job-seekers behaviour has in
most OECD countries nowadays become the principal and the most efficient
way to control the delivery of unemployment benefits.34 Usually, this behavioural
control primarily aims at reducing the caseload and making benefits more conducive
to employment. The payment of welfare transfers (insurance or assistance), it is
claimed, threatens to undermine the foundational link between welfare and work,
and it should be reshaped so that incentives to work are preserved. But to what
extent do such policies contribute to restoring the unemployed peoples capabilities?
Are the evaluation methods respectful of the individual job-seekers? Are the criteria
of public action the outcome of democratic deliberation or are they imposed from
above? Workfare policies have the potential directly to address peoples behaviour,
be it by incentives (tax schemes) or direct pressures on them. Such policies are not
just a standard distribution of allowances, but a political action aiming to have an
impact on individual agency. Indeed, the logic has passed from a backward-looking
conception (people are entitled to incomes and public services due to their past
contributions) to a forward-looking one (entitlements are given only if people
actively search for jobs and accept the constraints imposed by public agents). To
some extent, such policies claim that the (hopefully temporary) negation of
processual freedom is the key to the long-term enhancement of capabilities. In other
words, the use of constraint is justified ex post, on the ground that it has allowed
deprived people to take hold again over their life.
Neo-liberal views of workfare may be divided into two groups according to their
diagnosis of the causes of unemployment. The first one35 locates the reason for
unemployment in the bad will of the unemployed: there are plenty of jobs available
but the unemployed person chooses not to take them, because she prefers to live on
social benefits. In this perspective, the problem is not the absence or insufficiency of
the capability set. On the contrary it is the excess of capabilities that opens up the
possibility of laziness, of remaining imprisoned in the dependency trap. Reducing
the capability set, that is, reducing the freedom to choose, then becomes the remedy
to the unemployment crisis. Such an option is utterly incompatible with the
capability approach since it relies on the negation of both aspects of freedom:
processual freedom is replaced by constraint, and opportunities are purposefully
reduced in order to impose the solution selected by the administration or by the
economic actors in the labour market. Capabilities are identified as the obstacle,
since they reinforce the tendency to laziness.
By contrast, the second approach contests the so-called competency assumption
(the inability to achieve is necessarily envisaged as the consequence of bad will).
Following this second version of workfare, social assistance recipients do want to
work, but due to a discouraging previous record in the labour market, they cannot
134
achieve their desire to work, and remain jobless. The trouble lies with the instilled
culture of dependency resulting from the long-lasting entrapment in welfare
benefits. The use of constraint is required in order to eradicate this culture that
leaves long-term benefit recipients powerless in front of the requirements of the
labour market. Once again, the situation in the labour market is not the cause of
unemployment and there is no reason whatsoever to design demand-side policies.
Jobs are available, but the unemployed are unable to take them because of the
dependency culture instilled by welfare benefits. Such a denial of the competency
assumption provides a framework closer to the capability approach: indeed, the
difficulty of professional re-integration does not lie in the absence of willingness,
but in that of ability. However, both aspects of freedom, process and opportunity,
are equally denied in this second version of workfare. It also imposes the
whole burden of professional reintegration on the job-seeker, constrained, if she
wants to retain her entitlements, to abide by the stringent requirements of
workfare.36 Numerous phone calls, letters, regular in-depth interviews, etc. put
strong administrative pressure on the job-seeker in order to impose on her the
behaviour she would privilege if only she could. Sanctions act mainly as a
dissuasive device. This approach stipulates very precisely the expectations imposed
upon welfare recipients and, according to some estimates, it seems to be on the
whole well accepted by them. Moreover, it has allowed a reduction by half of the
caseload in US social assistance. However, it is not clear whether this outcome is the
result of a deterrent effect or of the efficiency of the new provisions. As a matter of
fact, the opportunity set offered to such job-seekers is so reduced (jobs proposed
under workfare programmes are unattractive to say the least) that the exit option,
giving up social benefits, is envisaged as an acceptable, though not at all valuable
option.
When deployed in such a way, the use of constraint poses numerous problems in
terms of capabilities: Sens definition of capabilities requires the combination of
both processes (where the individual is a genuine actor and not simply a passive
recipient of benefits or an obedient subject complying with normative prescriptions)
and opportunities (where the individual is offered a set of valuable opportunities). In
the capability approach framework, the use of constraint could be legitimated under
two conditions: 1) that it is accepted by the person concerned (or at the very least,
that the design of the constraining measure relies on the consensual approval of all
local partners) and 2) that it is accompanied by a significant increase of the
opportunity set (in order to avoid adaptive preferences, where the person declares
herself satisfied with an obviously unsatisfactory situation, which is often the case if
opportunities are very scarce). Soft versions of workfare using constraint as a
purely procedural device, without trying to impose any specific substantial content
on the job-seeker, could be envisaged as a tool to re-build expectations (especially
for the most deprived), provided the two conditions spelled above are strictly
respected.
However, the quick-fix remedies provided by most actual workfare programmes
have a negative impact in the long run: in Peck and Theodores words, though they
may be appropriate for some individuals under some local conditions, [their]
adoption as a generalised methodology results in a series of perverse labour-market
135
effects, contributing to the instability of low-paid employment and therefore

undermining the longer-term sustainability for the welfare-to-work effort.37 Thus,
the legitimacy of constraint in social policy is extremely limited and requires the
fulfilment of very stringent conditions. In their absence, workfare programmes are
doomed to obstruct all versions of capability for work. Indeed, imposing functionings on deprived people, and more generally on job-seekers, will very rarely
translate into capability improvement, be it in terms of well-being or agency.
CAPABILITY FOR VOICE
All developments in the previous sections evidence the significance of the choice of
the IBJJ for social integration policies. In this respect, the capability approach
underlines the necessity to make this choice in a situated way rather than trying
to impose top-down conceptions. Given the personal heterogeneities and the
environmental diversities,38 uniformly designed policies prove inappropriate. In
order to take into account the necessity to elaborate public policies and to assess
capabilities in situation, that is, to contextualise them, the procedural dimension of a
capability approach is crucial. This does by no means imply that substantial
outcomes and consequences of public action are outside the scope of the capability
approach. As the previous sections have illustrated, certain public actions do not
pass the capability test and they ought to be discarded. Still, there remain many
capability-friendly options and choosing among them cannot be the prerogative of
the State or of technocratic experts. In the capability perspective, capability for
voice, which requires all persons concerned actively to participate in the policy
process, is the very condition of the legitimacy of any individualised social
intervention. Capability for voice of course depends on personal characteristics such
as discursive competencies or self-confidence, but it more deeply relies on the social
and institutional environment and its ability to listen to the concerns voiced by the
persons involved (rather than imposing a pre-constructed conception of what public
policies should achieve). According to us, the essence of the capability approach is
procedural in the way defined above: it does not impose from the outside substantial
solutions (e.g. moral behaviours) on job-seekers, but requires that the list of valuable
functionings be determined through social choice or deliberation. Of course, these
procedural requirements do not hold for basic capabilities, but these are not the main
objective of social integration policies in affluent countries. In this specific field of
social policies in OECD countries, the only substantial component of the capability
approach in our view is that functionings conventionally defined as valuable,
via democratic deliberation are then effectively made available to all members of
society.
At the very centre of the capability approach, there are then the conditions to be
respected for a genuine capability for voice to prevail. The concept of situatedness
is part and parcel of the capability approach, which cannot accommodate with a topdown or command and control mode of governance, be it in the public policy
process or in any kind of institutions connected to the labour market. As Sen
136
repeatedly emphasises, the people concerned are to participate effectively in all

normative and rule-setting processes (at all levels, be it political decision-making,
collective bargaining or any other contractual rule-setting process). This implies that
the job-seeker be an actor of the activation process and that the worker be an actor of
the labour market regulation processes. This does in no way mean that the jobseekers and workers claims will shape the end result of the regulation process, but
that they must be able effectively to voice their concerns and to be listened to.
Indeed, the fact of a negative or unsatisfactory outcome is no convincing evidence
that ones point of view has not been taken into account.
Bohman identifies three conditions for achieving genuine capability for voice.39
Firstly, equality of access to the process should be guaranteed to all persons
concerned. The objective here is not formal equality of participation, but real
equality of access to the public debate, or equal capability of expressing ones views
and of being listened to. Such a large conception requires that all factors of
inequality such as power, wealth or social norms be neutralised. Secondly, there is
the condition of the publicity of the deliberation process in order to avoid any
discretionary use of the decision-making power. In the case of social integration
policies, this implies that local agents decisions be subject to impartial courts of
appeal. The third condition is that of freedom of speech for everyone involved in the
process (which implies the avoidance of any pressure threatening the freedom of
speech). This issue is particularly significant in the case of job-seekers, in order to
let people express their true preferences and not adaptive preferences. Indeed, jobseekers are often constrained into adapting their preferences in order to comply with
administrative requirements.
Thus the individual capability to communicate or use rational arguments in
public debate is a necessary but not sufficient condition. These aspects connected
with individual agency ought to be completed by dimensions of social agency such
as a capability-friendly legislative framework (allowing the field actors including
the job-seekers to define the most appropriate solutions, rather than to comply with
pre-defined administrative criteria), available possibilities of appeal against a
decision in front of impartial bodies, adequate institutional infrastructures, etc.
In the capability perspective, top-down approaches are not appropriate, since
they locate the whole power in the central government or management at the
expense of the local actors autonomy. They thereby forbid the very possibility of
reflexive regulation based on an exchange between the central and local levels, as
well as the possibility of at any time revising the substantial content of regulation.
Indeed, they impose the informational basis of justice, and do not let local actors
design their own public action. By the same token, they convey a naturalised
approach of the good policy, to which all field actors are then called to adapt
themselves. Voice has no place whatsoever in this model of public action.
The capability framework does not call for the disappearance of all forms of
central intervention, but it requires that it should be framed in such a way as to allow
the local actors to have their say at all stages of the policy process. Indeed, if the
designing process is hi-jacked by experts or policy-makers, it implies that the
peoples needs will be defined beforehand, without any concern for the specificity
of individual situations. Then, the recipients needs, wishes, expectations, etc. are
Bajo estas condiciones , Entonces

personas con discapacidad severas no
pueden tener esa capacidadeslibertades de voz
Vuales serian necesarias para q las
pcds las twngan?
Necesrio? Y como hacemos con las

personas con discapacidad severas y
dependientes?
137
predetermined and imposed on the weakest. This in turn considerably restricts the
autonomy of the people in charge of policy implementation and assessment: their
margin for manoeuvre is strictly limited by the requirements of technical compliance
with predetermined objectives. They are called upon to act as efficient translators of
the expert or bureaucratic view to the targeted public. Hence, the capability for voice
of civil officers in charge of implementation and assessment is significantly
restricted, and this prevents them from taking into account the needs expressed by
the recipients. By contrast, the capability approach requires providing the
implementers and evaluators with more capability for voice in order to allow them
better to integrate the concerns voiced by the beneficiaries.
However, situated public action is not enough to guarantee effective capability
for voice to all local actors. Indeed, situated action is easily threatened by
arbitrariness and abuse of power if it is not framed by appropriate institutions.40 An
efficient remedy against this consists in setting up adequate, impartial, conflictsolving procedures, which open up the possibility of contesting decisions ex post
and thus neutralising the negative impact of asymmetries of power between
institutional actors and benefit recipients. Another possibility could be the
establishment of collective actors responsible for the defence of the job-seekers.
These solutions aim at empowering the job-seeker, and at reinforcing her position
and reducing the asymmetry of power. Such considerations are highly relevant since
capability for voice is not only a matter of adequate discursive or cognitive
competencies, but also of power, which requires that the impact of legal provisions
be put at the disposal of the unemployed. Indeed, just as employability without
demand-side policies creating employment is doomed to be inefficient, discursive
competencies without corresponding structures of power and opportunities may well
be pointless.
IMPLEMENTING POLICIES: THE ROLE OF LOCAL AGENCIES
All these dimensions point to the crucial part played by local agencies in charge of
policy implementation. In the field of social policies, it is more accurate to assess
peoples possibilities from a positional-objective point of view.41 The combination
of the positional or situated perspective and of the informational basis of capability
allows to get the most objective picture of the job-seekers situation, integrating
the issues of personal heterogeneities, diverging preferences, as well as the influence
of the context (all of them impacting on the individual capacity to convert
commodities into capabilities or real freedoms). Thus, the positional-objective
perspective allows to combine subjective and objective assessment criteria, as
such it is also an ideal standpoint to criticise unjust structures or institutions from the
point of view of their modes of evaluation, and thus propose ways of reform.
The action of local agencies in this perspective is of particular importance. Many
studies have emphasised their increasing rule-setting contribution in the
implementation process.42 Previously reduced to a large extent to mere executive
tools of centrally designed policies, local agents are increasingly called upon to
138
invent tailor-made rules in situation. European Union recommendations in the field

of employment policies confirm this trend and implicitly refer to the ability of local
agencies to provide the hardest-to-place with tailored tools and opportunities.
A study pointed out that this new trend of locally implemented social policies relies
on tailored and individualised helps associated with specific in-kind allowances
(training, job-seeking techniques, etc.).43 The provision of these helps depends on
the evaluation of the distance of the unemployed from potentially available jobs. It
depends on an assessment of her needs for activation. In order to avoid arbitrariness,
the positional-objective perspective requiring to take into account subjective and
objective criteria is then of the utmost importance. In this context, the concern for
capability for voice all along the policy process, and especially during the jobseekers assessment, makes a crucial difference.
If public policies aim at raising the employment rate, the key issue at stake is the
choice of the IBJJ concerning the content and quality of these jobs: to what extent
are lower-paid or distantly located jobs acceptable for job-seekers? In this crucial
respect, capability for work and capability for voice ought to be considered hand in
hand, as the debates taking place within local agencies about the definition of the
suitable job aptly illustrates. What are the informational bases used to assess the
unemployed with regard to her distance from the labour market, and what are her
own informational bases in order to assess the job acceptability or the value of the
opportunities provided to her? The role of local agencies is here to connect the
informational bases of both actors, that is, the job-seekers preferences and
expectations and the administrative actors prescriptions, so that the definition of the
suitable job is not imposed by the administration, but collectively agreed. Many
studies have documented the increasing impact of this negotiation of trajectories and
identities between official public employment staff and beneficiaries. They have
also shown that systems of classification imposed by the central administration (via
e.g. official forms to be filled in for all job-seekers) often clash with the situated
logic of the local partners.44 Indeed, their capability for voice is effectively denied
when administratively defined criteria of assessment automatically, without listening
to the job-seekers requests, determine the intensity and the content of the help, as
still happens in many local employment offices throughout Europe.45 In this
perspective, the culture (and qualification) of the local agents is of particular
importance. Indeed, in cases of incompatibility between the administrative logic and
the situated one, the local agents capacity of resistance should not be underrated.46
Local conventions of responsibility may often impose themselves at the expenses of
centrally defined directives.47 As such they can prove more efficient in terms of
capabilities than ex postt legal controls (via the possibility of appealing against a
decision) that are very costly and based on a rather fuzzy jurisprudence.48
CONCLUSION
In our view, the capability approach is procedural in its very essence: it never
suggests the imposition of substantial contents on individuals, but strictly requires
that valuable functionings be defined via public deliberation associating all people
139
concerned. Hence, it does not provide a clear-cut definition of what capability for
work entails; it allows for a wide scope of interpretation in this matter.
Consequently, a large array of public policies may be considered as legitimate in the
light of the capability approach, provided they are the outcome of social choice
procedures. Situatedness features as the key component of the capability
framework in our view. The key role of local agencies in this perspective calls for
the opening up of a new research agenda, emphasising the role of informational
bases of judgements in social integration and employment policies. The capability
framework questions the effective conversion of rights and entitlements provided by
public policies into real freedoms with regard to the sphere of work. Local agencies
have a fundamental role and can thus be considered as a crucial empirical object, for
they are in charge of this effective conversion. The implementation process, we
assume, is fair and efficient if the opportunities offered enhance the beneficiaries
capability for work, and if the latter have the capability to voice what they consider
to be valuable opportunities.
Defining the policy goals in terms of capabilities allows a better combination of
substantial and procedural (situated, in-context) dimensions. In our view, the
capability approach goes as far as possible in the direction of substantial rights (by
requiring that every member of society be guaranteed access to the functionings
conventionally defined as valuable) while preserving the essential procedural
freedom of local actors. In this perspective, policy analysis and evaluation are called
upon to focus on the local level and on situated public action, which encompasses
the rule-setting action of all partners at all levels. Thus, the capability approach calls
for a departure from traditional social policy analysis, which concentrates on the
content of the policies designed and mostly neglects the stage of implementation.
As such, it provides an alternative framework better fitted to comprehend the
transformations of contemporary social integration policies.
Jean-Michel Bonvin is Associate Professor at the University of Geneva.
Nicolas Farvaque is a Research fellow at Ecole Normale Suprieure de Cachan.
NOTES
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Robeyns, 2000.
Balestrino, 1996; Oughton and Wheelock, 2003; Robeyns, 2002; Salais, 2003, 2004.
Sen, 1999.
Sen, 1997a,b; Solow, 1995; Stiglitz, 2002.
Balestrino, 1994; Brandolini and DAlessio, 1998; Chiappero Martinetti, 1996, 2000; Klasen, 2000; Le
Clainche, 1994; Lelli, 2001; Schokkaert and Van Ootegem, 1990; Vero, 2002.
Brandolini and DAlessio, 1998; Burchardt, 2002; Burchardt and Le Grand, 2002.
Le Clainche, 1994; Schokkaert and Van Ootegem, 1990.
Sen, 1997a,b.
Se contradice con lo primero donde dice

que el EC-L es principalmente
procedimental y es justsmente en la etapa
de diseo donde lo procedimental se deja
plasmado. Si no esta hai, es dificil q en la
implementacion se pueda disponer de
eso.
Pero ademas la evaluacion de po se hace
mas q nada en resuktados sin importar el
diseo mas que para determinar
alocaciones de recursos. Me parece
ewuivocadomlo q dice
140
9
Burchardt, 2002.
The informational basis of a judgement identifies the information on which the judgement is directly
dependent and no less important asserts that the truth or falsehood of any other type of information
cannot directly influence the correctness of the judgement. The IBJJ thus determines the factual
territory over which considerations of justice would directly apply. Sen, 1990. p. 111.
11
Dean et al., 2005.
12
There is no such thing as a goal to guarantee functionings to everybody. This is partly because a
functioning is only a dimension (not a magnitude), and how far we can go along that dimension will
depend on what our feasibilities are and what trade-offs we use for taking such crucial decisions as
equity versus efficiency. The analogy with commodities may be helpful here. We do not think in terms
of guaranteeing commodities to everybody. Sen, 1996. p. 117.
13
Sen, 1999: 126-7.
14
Sen, 1985a.
15
Sen, 1984: 516.
16
Ibid.: 497n 21.
17
The graph is drawn from Robeyns, 2000.
18
Drawn from the seminal example given in Sen, 1985a.
19
Hirschman, 1990.
20
See Sen s Arrow
A
Lectures reprinted in Sen, 2002
21
Nussbaum, 2000.
22
Sen, 1985b: 208.
23
Sen, 1999: 19.
24
Supiot, 2001.
25
Dean et al., 2005.
26
Sen, 1995: 14.
27
Raveaud, 2001.
28
Bonvin, 2004.
29
Gazier, 1999.
30
Schmid and Gazier, 2002.
31
At the risk of some oversimplification, it can be said that the literature on human capital tends to
concentrate on the agency of human beings in augmenting production capabilities. The perspective of
human capability focuses, on the other hand, on the ability the substantive freedom of people to
lead the lives they have reason to value and to enhance the real choices they have. The two perspectives
cannot but be related, since both are concerned with the role of human beings, and in particular with the
actual abilities that they achieve and acquire. But the yardstick of assessment concentrates on different
achievements. Sen, 1999: 293.
32
Muellbauer, 1987: 44.
33
Gasper, 2002.
34
Grubb, 2000.
35
Gilder, 1981.
36
Mead, 1997.
37
Peck and Theodore, 2000: 740.
38
Sen, 1999: 70-1.
39
Bohman, 1998.
40
Bonvin and Farvaque, 2003.
41
Bonvin and Farvaque, 2005; Sen, 1993.
42
Geddes and Benington, 2001.
43
Freyssinet, 2000.
44
Demazire, 2003.
45
Bonvin and Varone, 2004; Martinon, 2002.
46
Farvaque, 2004.
47
Farvaque and Raveaud, 2002.
48
Freyssinet, 2000.
10
141
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Chiappero Martinetti, Enrica (1996), Standard of Living Evaluation Based on Sens Approach: Some
Methodological Suggestions, Notizie di Politeia 12 (43/44): 37-54
________ (2000), A Multidimensional Assessment of Well-Being Based on Sens Functionings
Approach, Rivista Internazionale di Scienze Sociali 2
Dean, Hartley, Jean-Michel Bonvin, Pascale Vielle and Nicolas Farvaque (2005), Developing
Capabilities and Rights in Welfare-to-Work Policies, European Societies:, 1, 4-26
Demazire, Didier (2003), Le cchmage. Comment peut-on etre
e chmeur?,
c
Paris: Belin
Farvaque, Nicolas (2004), LEncadrement des acteurs locaux de linsertion des jeunes en France, Les
Politiques Sociales:, 1-2, 108-125
________ and Gilles Raveaud (2002), Responsibility and Employment Policies: A Conventionalist
View, Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the ESPANett Social Values, Social Policies,
Tilburg, 29-31 August
Freyssinet, Jacques (2000), Plein emploi, droit au travail, emploi convenable, Revue de lIRESS 34 27-58
Gasper, Des (2002), Is Sens Capability Approach an Adequate Basis for Considering Human
Development?, Review of Political Economy 14(4): 435-461
Gazier, Bernard (1999), Definition and Trends, B. Gazier, ed. Employability: Concepts and Policies,
Employment Observatory Research Network, Social Affairs, European Commission.
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Forms of Local Social Governance?, London: Routledge
Gilder, George (1981), Wealth and Poverty, New York: Basic Books
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lOCDE
E 31(11): 171-213
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Wealth 46(1): 33-58
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de Sen sur donnes franaises, Cahier de Recherche CREDOC
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CHAPTER 8
MICHAEL WATTS AND DAVID BRIDGES
ENHANCING STUDENTS CAPABILITIES?

UK Higher Education and the Widening Participation Agenda
INTRODUCTION
The British governments White Paper The Future of Higher Education1 calls
attention to the injustices embedded in current access to higher education,
particularly the under-representation of students from families with no tradition of
higher education and from the lower socio-economic groups.2 However, whilst it
calls for greater equality of access to Britains universities, it also assumes that
higher education is desirable at least for 50 per cent of the countrys young people.
This reflects policies in many countries which seek to extend access to higher
education out of some combination of considerations relating to social inclusion and
economic development. Hegemonic discourses present higher education as
something to be valued, an aspiration for the young people the government is
reaching out to. Yet participation rates of those from the working classes and lower
socio-economic groups remain low and there is a widely held assumption that low
aspirations and low achievements present barriers to the widening participation
agenda.
In this chapter we make use of a recent study of the aspirations and
achievements of young people who have chosen not to enter higher education3 to
address the relationship between capability and higher education. Our report focused
on the ways in which young people, particularly those from families with no
tradition of higher education and those from the lower socio-economic groups that
are specifically targeted in the White Paper, are able to identify with higher
education, why they may fail to do so and what they are able to achieve without it.
Here, we take this focus and use it as a framework within which to consider what
injustice the current widening participation agenda seeks to transform. We conclude
that the twin agendas of social inclusion and economic development lead to the reformation rather than the resolution of injustice (although we applaud the
governments desire to extend access to those traditionally excluded from higher
education).
We reach this conclusion by analysing the findings of our study through the
work of Amartya Sen which we use to address the values held by the young people
143
144
we worked with. Sens analytic framework enables us to reconsider the ways in

which social structures specifically, here, those in which higher education is
assumed to be of value are constructed and perceived. Whilst not condoning crass
injustices within the higher education system, this, in turn, allows us to interrogate
the different values different people place upon different lives and ways of living.
HIGHER EDUCATION IN BRITAIN
Historic Injustices in Higher Education
The White Paper The Future of Higher Education clearly signals both the injustices
embedded in higher education in Britain and the governments determination to
remedy them:
Education must be a force for opportunity and social justice, not for the entrenchment of
privilege. We must make certain that the opportunities that higher education brings are
available to all those who have the potential to benefit from them, regardless of their
background. This is not just about preventing active discrimination; it is about working
actively to make sure that potential is recognised and fostered wherever it is found.4
In Britain, participation in higher education remains a primarily middle class

activity; and the sense of injustice outlined in the White Paper reflects widespread
and long-standing concerns that educational opportunities remain fractured by classbased social inequalities5 that are replicated in higher education.6 Indeed, the higher
education system has long been implicated in the reproduction of these class-based
inequalities as well as inequalities based upon ethnicity and gender that typically
revolve around perceptions of the academic ability and social suitability necessary
for participation and the consequent access to the advantages higher education is
supposed to bring.
Higher education increases the potential for personal economic returns as well as
national economic development.7 A recent study published by the Higher Education
Council for England concluded that graduates from higher education typically
enjoyed higher levels of non-economic well-being across a range of indices
(including employability, health and civic engagement) than non-graduates.8 Higher
education can further enhance the benefits Sen attributes to education more
generally in reading, communicating, arguing, in being able to choose in a more
informed way, in being taken more seriously by others and so on.9 It can also, it is
argued, enable young people to achieve their aspirations; and, according to Richard
Brown, Director of the Council for Industry and Higher Education, it can raise the
confidence of those that can all too easily be trapped in a culture of low expectations
and under-achievement.10 Moreover, particularly in a society in which the officially
sanctioned process of commodification through certification means that what
they learn tends to have less meaning for them beyond its utilitarian application and
exchange value11 graduation can provide the individual with a document indicating
the acquisition of the higher level skills that a higher education is supposed to
provide.
The working classes (or lower socio-economic groups as they are often referred
to now in the discourse of the middle classes) have been historically excluded from
145
participating in higher education; and, although there have been moves towards a
more inclusive system over the past several decades, with significant increases in the
number of young people entering higher education and gender imbalances largely
resolved, participation rates of those from the working classes and lower socioeconomic groups remain low. Despite the rise of the so-called postmodern
university with its potential for greater flexibility12 the association between these
under-represented groups and higher education remains deeply problematic. As
Archer et al, in their study of the exclusion and inclusion permeating the relationship
between higher education and social class, pithily explain:
Dominant government discourses have framed working-class participation in higher
education as a way of achieving change; that is, for working-class participants to
change themselves and the national and/or local population by becoming more
educated, skilled, affluent, socially mobile, civilized and (implicitly) middle class.
These changes are assumed to be good and worthwhile, and carry a further assumption
that it is the working-class individual who must adapt and change, in order to fit into,
and participate in, the (unchanged) HE institutional culture and wider system.13
Moreover, for all the promises it holds out, there is still the likelihood that
students entering higher education will either progress from privileged pasts to
privileged futures or from less privileged pasts to less secure and lower status
futures.14 Indeed, recent evidence suggests that extending opportunities for
participation in higher education does not necessarily lead to extended opportunities
in the labour market and that, even with the advantage of higher education, students
from the most deprived backgrounds tend to go to the jobs with less prestige and
lower pay than their peers.15
There is, then, a prima facie case that higher education in the UK is unjust; and
the sense of injustice referred to in the White Paper is predicated on the assumption
an assumption that is typically oversimplified and/or unexamined that higher
education brings certain advantages that these working class participants are
excluded from. This assumption is something that educational research contributes
to: in focusing upon the difficulties certain social groups confront in progressing to
and accessing higher education, we do not always pause to question why they should
want to enter higher education. Challenging this assumption was the genesis of our
recent research into non-participation; and we return to this below in the analysis of
our study.
Widening Participation
The White Paper sets out to address the under-representation of certain social
groups in higher education through its plans for widening participation. The current
Labour government has set a target for a 50 per cent participation rate of young
people (18-30 year olds) in higher education by the year 2010 with a specific focus
on significantly increasing the number of young people from traditionally underrepresented groups entering university and other higher education institutes.
Encouragement for young people will continue moves towards greater flexibility in
entry level requirements, shifting away from an exclusive focus on traditionally
academic qualifications and financial packages to offset economic concerns. In
146
short, government policy appears concerned with ensuring that the benefits that
accrue from higher education are more readily available and accessible across
society. That is, there is the intent is to reform an unjust educational structure.
However, there is another agenda within the White Paper. At the same time as
the government is promoting higher education as a means of social justice and
personal development, it is continuing the historic tradition of promoting higher
education as a means of economic development. The two strands of policy are very
closely intertwined and this has significant implications for the transformation of
injustice through the current widening participation agenda because, it can be
argued, the utilitarian drive towards expanded access is fundamentally unjust itself.16
The social and economic arguments are closely allied with each other insofar as
it is recognised that much of the real talent of the country and of the region may well
lie in people from sections of the population which are traditionally underrepresented in higher education. We have discussed elsewhere17 the tensions
between the economic and social agendas in widening participation, but if
government targets of up to 50 per cent of the age cohort participating in higher
education are to be achieved, this will require recruitment from social groups other
than the middle classes that have traditionally provided most of the recruits.
Therefore, those who have the potential to benefit from higher education are
charged with the responsibility of building aspirations and attainment throughout
all stages of education;18 and they and their families need to be encouraged to
raise their aspirations and achieve more of their potential in examinations prior to
entry to higher education.19 This, it should be remembered, is not merely to enable
them to benefit themselves from higher education but to benefit the national
economy.
However, the governments target is grounded in the assumption that this
proportion of the population will aspire to proceed into higher education and will
have achieved a sufficient level of educational attainment to be able to benefit from
such participation. Neither condition is yet in place. Moreover, the corollary of the
link between higher aspirations and higher education is that low aspirations may be
attributed to those young people not entering higher education; and low aspirations
and low achievement among sections of the 16-19 year old population is a constant
analysis of the failure to meet these governmental participation targets.20
This analysis is not without its problems because it assumes that aspirations
which are not directed towards pathways through higher education and achievements which are not measured in conventional educational terms are low
and, indeed, inferior. Yet within the hierarchy of higher education and the pages of
this chapter one persons aspiration may be the object of anothers indifference
and one persons achievement might similarly be anothers failure. A significant
problem with the widening participation endeavour is that at the same time that it is
being promoted as greatly desirable by those who regulate and fund postcompulsory education, their own perceptions and priorities remain limited and
outdated. This militates against any fundamental change both in the system itself
and therefore in public perceptions of it; and this, in turn, greatly influences the
perceptions of injustice that the government seeks to transform through its widening
participation agenda.
147
WHOSE ASPIRATIONS? WHAT ACHIEVEMENT?

What may be perceived as an injustice from governments vantage point within the
social hierarchy may well be perceived as something very different by those the
government claims to be reaching out to. This was the genesis of our recent study
which set out to investigate the assumption that low aspirations and low
achievements act as barriers to the British governments widening participation
agenda. Biographical life history research was conducted with fifteen young people
who had chosen not to enter (and, in most cases, even consider) higher education.
This research involved extended face-to-face interviews with the participants, some
of them taking place over several sessions; and further interviews, some of them
carried out by the research participants themselves, with their peers in order to
provide further, in-depth context.
We feel that autobiographical research such as life histories offer a particularly
useful means of comprehending the ways in which individuals experience and
understand their lives and the various factors including injustices that impact
upon them. Life histories place the stories that people tell about themselves within
social and political contexts and can, therefore, provide greater insight into the
meanings that people give to their lives. As such, these life histories can be used to
restate the central role that people play in educational processes and educational
systems. They offer the disenfranchised a voice that allows us to feel and become
aware of the deep biases about such people;21 and, within an educational context,
they allow those telling their stories to establish their own identities. These stories
offer the rest of us an insight into the thoughts and feelings that might underlie their
educational choices.
Avoiding cultural and political analyses can strengthen the hand of those in
powerful positions22 with the potential to reinforce dominant discourses that may
as evidenced in the White Paper influence policy. Life histories seek to subvert the
official line. By focusing on the accounts of individuals, they acknowledge that
meaning is created and life is experienced from particular positions in social
hierarchies. It means that we may find ourselves listening to what we do not expect
or do not wish to hear. But that is the quintessence of biographical research such as
d Critical to an
this: it is concerned not with what is but with what is experienced.
understanding of the importance of these life histories is the tendency towards what
Becker calls the unthinking acceptance of the hierarchy of credibility where there
is the danger that we may not realize that there are sides to be taken and that we are
taking one of them.23 We must, in short, be wary of toeing the official line too
readily. The wider access debate is full of statistics indicating trends but these
numbers fail to capture the experiences of the real people for whom this debate is a
real concern. In turning to life history, we sought to fill in some of the gaps between
the statistical numbers.
We found that the assumption that they had chosen not to enter higher education
because they have low aspirations and low achievements was challenged by the
accounts given by these young people, many of whom resented such implications.
Personal aspirations were developed and valued within personal contexts that
148
profoundly influenced the importance attached to them. Vocational forms of postcompulsory education, such as the National Vocational Qualifications and Modern
Apprenticeships, often facilitated the achievement of vocational aspirations; and,
therefore, greater value was attached to them than to what was usually perceived as
the academic study of higher education. Moreover, typically, higher education
was neither necessary nor seen as necessary to the achievement of these aspirations.
However, economic, academic and social issues influenced the perceptions of
the value that higher education mightt have. Concerns generated by a lack of proper
information about fees exacerbated the typical assumption that these anticipated
costs would not be offset by the potential to qualify for better paid and/or more
satisfying work. Higher education was typically perceived as full-time academic
study and of less personal value than the pursuit of vocational training which often
re-engaged these young people with education. Although some of them
subsequently indicated that they might consider higher education if its vocational
and personal relevance could be demonstrated, they were unaware of degree-level
vocational qualifications. Negative social perceptions of higher education were
widespread. However, where they existed, social networks and personal contacts
often overcame these serving to remind us again that access to reliable information
from trusted sources is therefore critical to the widening participation agenda.
WIDENING PARTICIPATION SEEN THROUGH SENS CAPABILITY
APPROACH
The capability approach of Amartya Sen enables us to address the aspirations of
those young people to whom the government, through its widening participation
agenda, is reaching out. Although it can be argued that the utilitarian focus of this
agenda is fundamentally unjust24 it does not automatically follow that it cannot
enhance the freedoms of at least some young people to live the lives that they value
and have reason to value. To consider this potential we turn to the account of one of
our research participants, Renata, whose values shifted during the course of the
study from self-exclusion from higher education to the possibility of participation;
and we suggest that the capability approach enables us to apprehend the different
ways of life and living that generate and validate her values. Her account serves as a
reminder that we hold different things to be of value and, closely linked to this, that
we have unequal opportunities to achieve our aspirations.
Sen began developing the capability approach as a critique of mainstream
welfare economics and utilitarianism, arguing that evaluations of equality should not
be based only on information about peoples sense of happiness, their desire
fulfilment or their command of primary goods (which can include commodities and
other goods, particularly in the Rawlsian sense, such as self-respect and liberty)
because these do not necessarily lead to increased well-being. A persons wellbeing, he explained, is not really a matter of how rich he or she is25 and their
standard of living must be directly a matter of the life one leads rather than of the
resources and means one has to lead a life.26 Command over commodities, then, is
merely a means to the end of well-being and not the end itself.
149
This notion of well-being, Sen claims, is located in the freedom to choose from
the range of options a person has in deciding what kind of life to lead.27 The
obverse of such well-being, poverty of life, is not only to be found in the state of
impoverishment (including financial poverty) but also in the lack of real
opportunity given by social constraints as well as personal circumstances to
choose from other types of living.28 To enable this focus on freedom, Sen makes
use of the concepts of functionings and capabilities where: a functioning is an
achievement29 that reflects the various things a person may value doing or
being;30 and a capability is the ability to achieve31 and is thus a kind of
freedom the freedom to achieve various lifestyles.32 A persons functionings and
capabilities are closely linked but significantly different: functionings are in a
sense, more directly related to living conditions, since they are different aspects of
living conditions whilst capabilities are notions of freedom in the positive sense:
what real opportunities you have regarding the life you may lead.33 The difference
between functionings and capabilities, then, is the difference between the realised
and the potential, between outcome and opportunity, and between achievement and
the freedom to achieve.
To assess well-being we must consider the alternative combinations of
functionings from which a person can choose (i.e. their capabilities) and so we must
examine the extentt to which people have the opportunity to achieve outcomes that
they value and have reason to value.34 These options form a persons capability set.
Capability or the capability to function represents the various combinations of
functionings that a person can achieve and choose from. It reflects a persons
freedom to lead one type of life or another [and their] freedom to choose from
possible livings.35 A persons well-being, then, according to Sen, is to be found in
her freedom to choose from different possible functionings, different beings and
doings, different ways of living life.
Such freedom, though, is very different from the socially structured denial of real
choice; and we must be sensitive, then, to the matter of adaptive preference whereby
people confronted by deprivation adjust their abilities and dispositions towards more
realistic and more limited possibilities.36 A failure to account for this can be
deeply unfair to those who are persistently deprived: for example, the usual
underdogs in stratified societies who come to terms with their deprivation because
of the sheer necessity of survival.37
We had two reasons for making use of the capability approach in our study of
widening participation. Firstly, its origins in the shift away from income-based
analysis offer an expedient corrective to the instrumental thrust of current
government policy. Arguing against lowness of income as a criterion of
disadvantage, Sen explains that its derivative value is contingent on many social
and economic circumstances38 and there are, we suggest, clear parallels here with
our focus on potential educational disadvantages that are also contingent upon such
circumstances and that may get overlooked in the rush towards economic
regeneration. Secondly, and following on from this, the capability approach
addresses these analytic concerns by assessing the freedoms people have to choose
valued lifestyles; and this, as we show below, provides an extremely useful
150
framework within which to address the reall opportunities young people have to
participate in meaningfull forms of higher education and to consider whether
university can improve their well-being.
Within a diverse and unequal society we have different aspirations that are
formed and deformed by social and educational scripts. Although all forms of
education have the potential to expand capabilities39 not everyone aspires to
professional, degree-requiring employment (which is not to say that they do not
aspire to the benefits such as income, job satisfaction, and so on that higher
education mightt bring); and not everyone wants to go to university. However, much
perhaps most research into widening participation focuses on the structural
inequalities that place academic, financial and social barriers between individuals
from certain social groups and higher education.40 We do not seek to dismiss the
pertinence of such work (and we incorporated much of it within our study) but we
tentatively suggest that this typically leaves us addressing (in Sens terms) only their
capability deprivations. Such analyses are valid and important to the issue of
widening participation; and they are highly pertinent to our use of the capability
approach because such perceptions influence the achievement of functionings and
therefore inform capability sets. Yet with such a focus on the barriers raised by
social inequalities we risk overlooking the freedom young people have in choosing
not to enter higher education. That is, we are likely to concentrate on negative
restrictions rather than positive choices.
When using the capability approach to consider widening participation we must
examine not only the reall opportunities young people have (including those that
may be constrained by perceptions of the risk involved in negotiating socially
constructed barriers) but also the capability to enter higher education which requires
it to be a potential (and realistic) choice selected from amongst valued alternatives.
However, it is not enough to simply dismiss higher education as something that
these young people do not value either in itself (that is, its intrinsic value) or as a
means of achieving other functionings (that is, its instrumental value). We must also
consider the opportunities they have to understand and acknowledge its potential
value. Such acknowledgement is a necessary precursor to determining what real
opportunities these young people have to consider meaningfull forms of higher
education because, if we are concerned with the freedom to achieve valued doings
and beings, we must also address the freedom to value these doings and beings. In
using the capability approach here, then, we are obliged to both step back to
consider what functionings (the doings and beings) these young people value and
look forwards to assess the freedoms they have to achieve them.
Widening Participation and the Capability Approach illustrated through the Life
History of Renata Sharpe
To illustrate the use of the capability approach, we turn now to the life history of
one of the young people we have been working with. Renata is from Norfolks
Traveller (or Gypsy) community and so belongs to one of the more marginalised
151
social groups in Britain.41 We use Renatas personal story42 to provide an insight

into the complex and dynamic nature of educational functionings and capabilities.
For Renata, these operate within wider contexts of injustice because even in what
claims to be a pluralistic society, Travellers are typically marginalised and they are
frequently made scapegoats for a variety of societal ills. This marginalisation
contributes to a very strong sense of communal identity; and one aspect of this group
identity, clearly articulated by Renata in her accounts, is the rejection of formal
schooling and post-compulsory education. For her to implicitly criticise this identity
by valuing her extant education and contemplating a return to post-compulsory
education is to risk a great deal including the well-being that is generated by her
group identity.43
Renata had left school at sixteen with above average grades in her GCSEs (the
General Certificate of Secondary Education examinations usually taken at the end of
compulsory schooling in England) and took a series of short-lived and generally
unsatisfying, although reasonably well paid, jobs. Other family members were in
low status and low paid jobs; and most of them had quit education at the first
opportunity (often before reaching the minimum legal age for school leaving).
Without high academic achievements (where a hegemonic interpretation of
achievement focuses attention on the attainment of high grades) and without socially
formed and informed expectations to continue formal education, she did not want to
pursue her studies whether for their own sake or in order to open the doors to other
professional careers in the future.
Paid employment had a purpose and meaning for Renata that unpaid education
did not have. In considering her aspirations and achievements it is necessary to
recognise the importance of social norms and accepted mores. Embedded in social
and family contexts that do not place great emphasis on formal education, her life
had been following a trajectory that moved away from academic forms of education
and towards employment. She did not particularly enjoy the academic aspects of
school and, whilst we are wary about confusing pleasure with value, that lack of
enjoyment necessarily informs the lack of value attached to it. Employment,
however, was perceived as a valued alternative to school: it paid and this enabled
other functionings (such as social activities and a sense of independence).
Moreover, as she later explained, at this stage of her life she preferred pay in the
present rather than the possibility of more pay in the future.
When we met her, Renata was working with younger Traveller children in a
newly started day care centre; and, at the time of her involvement with our research,
she was studying for an NVQ (National Vocational Qualification) in childcare as
part of her training. This work did not pay as much as some of her previous jobs but
it provided a greater sense of satisfaction. It signalled three significant changes: it
offered the intrinsic reward of performing meaningful and satisfying work; it offered
the potential for career progression which would be enhanced by higher education;
and it introduced her to colleagues who were university graduates and who valued
higher education. As her NVQ was related to her work she attached greater
significance to it than she had done to her formal, school-based qualifications. She
did not see this as being as meaningless as school-based study: it was a part of
meaningful, paid work and not an alternative to it. Having found satisfying work,
152
and having recommenced studying, she was re-assessing her future career and the
role that other forms of education, including higher education, might play in it.
Whereas she had originally seen higher education as having no relevance to the sort
of work she had anticipated doing, having been introduced to meaningful work, she
had begun to consider it as a means of progressing her specific work (that is, she was
considering it as a means of pursuing particular employment opportunities rather
than employment opportunities in general). The NVQ level 3 she aspired to will
qualify her for entry to higher education.
On leaving full time formal education, Renata had neither obtained nor intended
obtaining the qualifications typically necessary for entry to higher education.
Consequently, within the parameters of widening participation, higher education
was not, at that stage of her life, a realistic option for her. We could, therefore,
suggest that there is an initial capability deprivation here except that higher
education was not, at this stage of her life, something she valued. This signals the
need to recognise the dynamic nature of functionings and capabilities because,
several years after leaving school, Renata came to acknowledge the potential value
to her of post-compulsory education. As indicated above, we need to consider the
extent to which people have reall opportunities to determine what is of value to
them; and we address this in greater detail below when we posit our three capability
sets revolving around the opportunity to access reliable information upon which to
base decisions.
In the meantime, whilst Renata may not have originally seen any value in higher
education, vocational education acquired value in that it was linked to and enabled
the progression of meaningful and satisfying work: amongst other things, it was seen
to increase relevant knowledge and skills, provide a greater earning potential,
enhance her curriculum vitae and improve opportunities of finding similar, and
perhaps better, employment elsewhere. At the same time, with the NVQ level 3
meeting entry-level requirements for higher education, she began to recognise the
value of this educational possibility as she began considering her career
development. This vocational route has the potential to give young people, such as
Renata, the realistic opportunity (subject to other constraints, such as cost and the
sense of social suitability) of choosing whether or not to apply for and enter higher
education. However, such decisions depend upon perceptions of higher education
and the relevance it has to their lives and to their current and future employment.
Functionings are valuedd doings and beings; and Renata was beginning to
recognise both the instrumental and the intrinsic value of graduate level employment. Higher education, obviously, is necessary for this. Yet whilst entry to
higher education may be realistic in the sense of achieving entry-level requirements,
particular images of higher education generate concerns about academic ability and
social suitability as well as financial concerns both in terms of loss of earnings and
of fees which may not be applicable but were seen by Renata and the other young
people in our study, lacking the appropriate knowledge, as a problem. Her work with
young Traveller children took her beyond the expectations written into the social
and educational scripts of her life; and she had come to value this work for the
responsibility, the satisfaction and the status it brought. Having found this valued
employment, she came to realise that higher education might improve her options to
153
pursue this specific work (that is, as distinct from work in general) although, at the
time of our research, she was several years away from achieving entry-level
qualifications through her NVQ. However, to progress to higher education
predicates socially-constructed risks and, as we closed our research, she was still
dithering over her social suitability.
She had a cogent argument to support her concerns about this social suitability
(Tell me a Traveller thats been to uni. I dont know anyone) but it was her
perception of higher education that generated this socially mediated concern. After
all, higher education is reaching out to young people from all walks of life and she is
a sociable person with a range of friends from different backgrounds. There is, then,
a contrast between her true preferences (the potential to progress her career though
higher education) and the preferences that guide her decisions (the unwillingness
to risk social insecurity). However, her freedom to negotiate these concerns about
social suitability was expanding: as she came to appreciate the potential value of
higher education, she began looking more closely at it and interrogating her
assumptions.
Although in a state of flux, it was because she valued her work that she had
embarked upon the NVQ that will eventually enable her to enter higher education if
she chooses. The more she learned about her work, the more she learned about the
potential value of higher education. And the more she learned about this, the more
she learned about her own self and, therefore, whether she was academically able
and socially suitable enough for higher education. This is a process of capability
expansion not because she was progressing to higher education but because she
was progressing to the stage of being able to make reasonable choices about realistic
options. The capability approach recognises that if she negotiates the concerns
generated by socially constructed risks and stilll does not progress to higher
education, then her capability set is expanded as she is able to freely choose
between, inter alia, progressing to and through higher education as a means of
achieving valued doings and beings and choosing not to go in order to continue
valued employment (or, all things considered, because she simply does not want to).
That she may, after all, reasonably perceive higher education as being irrelevant to
her needs does not diminish her freedom to make such a choice.
WIDENING PARTICIPATION AND THE FREEDOM TO ACCESS HOT
KNOWLEDGE
The current widening participation policy is unjust if it ignores and marginalises
those who are currently under-represented in higher education by conflating the
needs of industry with the drive for social justice through wider access and if it
demands too much of these typically under-represented groups.44 Rather than
succumb to the hegemonic discourse and accept that non-participation in higher
education is, if only in part, a result of low aspirations and low achievements, we
need to assert the values of those who reject this discourse and pursue valued
aspirations through other routes that by-pass higher education.
154
The hegemonic discourse of the governments widening participation agenda

gives rise to the argument that low aspirations and low achievements are barriers to
the 50 per cent participation rates in higher education necessary to meet the demands
of both social justice and industry. Set against this, however, and illustrated in
Renatas life history, is the argument of the same young people that the government
is reaching out to that higher education has little or no value to them and their lives.
There is, we could suggest, a two-way failure to understand these opposing views:
there is a governmental failure properly to recognise the different aspirations and
achievements of those who have chosen not to enter higher education; and there is
the potential failure of these educationally marginalised young people to understand
the possible benefits afforded by higher education. To satisfy the need to represent a
pluralistic society in which not everyone has the capability of perceiving and
acknowledging the governmental line on wider access, we need a model that enables
us to take this misinformation into account whilst interrogating the social justice
within the widening participation agenda. In other words, it needs to be sensitive
enough to represent the values and aspirations of those under-represented social
groups who typically eschew higher education whilst simultaneously being robust
enough to withstand the accusations that these same groups have low aspirations and
low achievements.
The young people in our study, including Renata, made clear that higher
education as they perceived it had nothing of value to offer them. Is this, though,
a reasonable interpretation? Are they able to convert the functioning of
understanding and appreciating the potential value higher education has? Or, put
another way, do they necessarily know what is good for them? The value of higher
education is to be found in the congruence of what it offers and what is wanted from
it and so it may not be valued by someone who appreciates the progression of their
practical work (whether for instrumental or intrinsic reasons) through other means.
However, not all the young people we worked with were able to achieve the
functioning of making reasoned decisions about the value of higher education; and
many of the value judgements they made were founded on ignorance. They had, in
Sens terms, failed to achieve the functioning of being able to access what has been
called hot knowledge the trusted, often informal networks that would enable
young people to negotiate their perceptions of higher education and thus make
informed and reasoned choices about what value it mightt offer.45 They had failed in
this because their educational and social contexts had effectively prevented them
from being able to recognise any potential worth that higher education might have in
relation to them, their lives and their aspirations.
It does not, of course, follow that the achievement of this functioning will
automatically lead to the reassessment of higher educations value; and this may
lead us to conclude that there is no capability deprivation if these young people
attach no value to higher education. Here we must pay close attention to what these
young people really value and why they value it and we must be wary of
ascribing too much of that freedom of choice that can bemuse and befuddle, and
make ones life more wretched46 thereby undermining a persons sense of her wellbeing. The problem, though, is that higher education may have value that they
cannot recognise because they do not have access to the knowledge that allows them
155
to negotiate socially constructed and embedded perceptions that it has no value. So,
what real opportunities do they have, then, to make realistic choices about valued
options?
We can glean some insight into these opportunities and, therefore, generate the
sort of knowledge that may usefully inform policy by looking towards a model
that enables the representation of peoples values and provides an understanding of
how this relates to their ability to make decisions concerning higher education. Selfreflexive identification and self-understanding are critical aspects of the wider
access debate because choices What university? Why university? are rooted in
these identities that are, in turn, rooted in social and educational backgrounds. The
social constructions permeating and surrounding these identities leave us with
significantly different ideas about who we are and what we are capable of. As
indicated in our study, this can have a profound effect upon the links between what
these young people were actually able to do or be and the freedoms they had to
achieve the different lifestyles they aspired to within unjust social structures. In
order to address the freedoms of these young people, in order to address the real
opportunities they had to accomplish what they valued and to lead the educational
lives they wanted to lead, we must consider what it is reasonable for these young
people to expect.
As Renatas life history indicates, expectations about what is reasonable are
informed by the freedom to access trusted and reliable sources of information that
may be used in reaching decisions concerning higher education. Her experiences
suggest that choices are not always freely made. They are crucially dependent upon
access to what we called earlier hot knowledge. Even if or, rather, particularly
because valued aspirations are devalued by hegemonic discourses, such
knowledge is needed in order to understand what she may achieve from the giving
up of other functionings (such as those related to group identity and immediate
income). The importance of this hot knowledge is illustrated in Renatas
educational, employment, family and social circles. With no friends or family
having gone to university, higher education was not something she had even
considered or was even able to properly consider because it was beyond the
reach of her social realm. However, when she began working with colleagues who
were themselves university graduates, she was able to start the process of making an
informed decision about the value higher education might have for her. She was,
therefore, able to expand this newly enhanced capability set because she was able to
access the hot knowledge that gave her what we might consider the inside
information to make informed choices.
However, such knowledge, gleaned from the grapevine,47 can also generate
limited and confused information and misinformation.48 This, too, has its part to
play in the issue of widening participation because it informs (and deforms) the
values associated with higher education. Drawing upon the accounts generated
during this research and elsewhere,49 we want to posit three typologies those of the
initiated, aspirant and outsiders that frame this issue of capability and higher
education. Within this proposed framework, Renata, as an outsider, would have been
initially situated in the third typology where she was unable to use this hot
knowledge to make informed decisions about higher education. Developing a
156
RIDGES
greater understanding of her own self in relation to higher education, though, she
was, when we met her, moving into the aspirational typology.
The initiated inhabit a world in which they are able to make pertinent judgements
informed by social- and school-based networks that enable them to access and make
sense of important and reliable information (or hot knowledge) that they are able,
within their world, to interpret and then apply to themselves. That is, they have
access to sufficient information about higher education, and themselves in relation to
their social suitability and academic ability, to make properly informed decisions
about entering higher education.
The aspirant do not have the reassuring networks of the initiated; and therefore
do not necessarily have their confidence when considering their own academic
ability and/or social suitability. Instead, they may be socially located within other
networks that covertly and/or overtly steer them away from higher education. This
means that they may not be able properly to decipher information about higher
education and they might therefore require guidance towards the information that
will enable them to make their choices. However, although they do not possess the
knowledge of the initiated they have sufficient self-knowledge to seek out the
information that is required to make properly informed decisions.
The outsiders lack (or, more accurately, perceive their lack of) academic ability
and social suitability and would therefore not ordinarily consider higher education.
Their social worlds do not enable them to access the networks necessary to make
these choices. However, they do typically situate them in other networks that
covertly and/or overtly steer them away from higher education, thus deforming their
views of what it is and what it can potentially offer them. The distances they
perceive between them and higher education (if they look towards it at all) are
usually too great for them to contemplate whether academically, socially or both.
Higher education, in short, is unreal to them and without prompting they would not
consider applying. Typically, they require interventions before even acknowledging
the possibility of considering, let alone actually applying to, higher education.
The relationship between Sens capability approach and education has not yet
been fully explored.50 We have made use of that relationship here because we
recognise significant parallels between the widening participation agenda in Britain
and the capability approach. The latter proposes three arguments: that the goal of
human development should be to expand the capabilities people have to enjoy
valuable beings and doings; that people should have access to the positive
resources necessary to obtain these capabilities; and that they should be able to make
choices that matter to them. According to the capability approach, then, human
development is achieved when people realistically choose to enjoy a greater set of
valuable activities or ways of being.
Applying the capability approach to this proposed framework is both as
complicated and simple as these parallels suggest. It is complicated because the
boundaries between these sets are marked by socially constructed realities that
significantly influence peoples perceptions of themselves as academically able and
socially suitable enough for the educational goals they seek and therefore influence
their functionings, that is, the various things a person may value doing or being.51
157
It is simple because these three types are circumscribed by capabilities, the

feasibility of actually achieving various functionings, and therefore reflect the
freedoms these young people have to achieve various educational lifestyles or reflect
the real opportunities they have regarding the lives they lead. Within this proposed
framework, peoples choices are constrained to a greater or lesser extent by the
socially constructed perceptions of their academic ability and social suitability to
partake in higher education. The three sets are, therefore, bounded by progressive
levels of exclusion and marginalisation. However, if we are to evaluate injustice so
that we may aspire towards justice, we must understand the aspirations and values
that inform the widening participation agenda within a pluralistic society.
CONCLUSION
Introducing the governments White Paper and reflecting upon the state of Britains
universities, the Education Secretary suggests that it would be possible to opt for a
quiet life. To coast along, bask in previous successes, shirk the need for reform.52
To be fair, the Secretary does go on to add that this would be wrong but there is
much in these two sentences that sum up the approach to the wider access issue as it
is addressed in the White Paper. Despite assurances to the contrary,53 there is a sense
that it is more of the same: the current widening participation agenda overlooks the
personal and societal characteristics that influence the construction and achievement
of aspirations the aspirations the government believes should be more directed
towards higher education. More of the same means propelling more students,
especially those from the working classes and lower socio-economic groups (our
outsiders) towards something that they may not be able to identify with, make sense
or use of or, given real opportunities, necessarily choose. More of the same also
means that neither the structure nor the injustice of widening participation is likely
to be transformed.
Higher education in Britain today remains a deeply unjust structure in which
perceptions and misperceptions of social suitability and academic ability still place
too many restraints upon wider access. Some young people, such as Renata, may
come to acknowledge that higher education may provide something of value; but,
even so, we should not presume that it will necessarily be pursued. However, other
young people, similarly outside the educational and social networks that proclaim
the value of higher education, may never go and may never want to go to
university. Yet, with a governmental focus on degree-level qualifications, their
aspirations and achievements may be undervalued. A failure to take these aspirations
and achievements into account unjustly implies culpability in those who choose to
limit their educational aspirations through the decision not to pursue higher
education and those who cannot perceive its value to them and their lives. Although
wider access is to be applauded, the failure to address the real opportunities people
have to enjoy the educational lives they want to lead (including the opportunities to
quit education free from the accusation of having low aspirations and achievements)
suggests that this may be an enterprise that is doomed simply to establish other
educational injustices.
158
Along with Sen we seek the just representation of a pluralistic society that is, a
representation that acknowledges both the diverse aspirations and achievements of
its members and the limitations placed upon them. One critical limitation within the
widening participation debate is the capability of making choices informed by
reliable knowledge from trusted sources. The capability approach has the potential
to considerably inform and illuminate the widening participation agenda because it
enables a greater consideration of why and how young people make educational
choices. Almost inevitably, we are left to conclude that its application to the
widening participation agenda merits further and more detailed consideration. By
itself it cannot transform the unjust structure of higher education in Britain.
However, it can transform the debate on wider access.
Michael Watts is Research Associate at the Von Hgel Institute, St Edmunds
College, Cambridge, UK.
David Bridges is Chair of the Von Hgel Institute, St Edmunds College,
Cambridge, UK.
NOTES
1
DfES, 2003.
Ibid.: 67-75.
3
Watts and Bridges, 2004.
4
DfES, 2003: 67.
5
Furlong and Cartmel, 1997; Green, 1990; Plummer, 2000; Reay, 2001; Savage and Egerton, 1997.
6
Ainley, 1994; Archer and Hutchings, 2000; Archer et al, 2003; Ball et al, 2002; Bridges, 2000, 2004;
Egerton and Halsey, 1993; Modood and Acland, 1998; Watts, 2002; Watts and Bridges, 2004;
Williams, 1997.
7
DfES, 2003: 59.
8
HEFCE, 2001.
9
Sen, 1999: 294.
10
Brown, 2000: 218.
11
Ainley, 2003: 348.
12
Bridges, 2000; Smith and Webster, 1997.
13
Archer et al, 2003: 176.
14
Dearing, 1997: 106.
15
Brennan and Shah, 2003.
16
Watts, 2005.
17
Bridges, 2004; Watts, 2004.
18
DfES, 2003: 68.
19
Ibid.
20
Watts and Bridges, 2004.
21
Becker, 1970: 71.
22
Goodson, 1995.
23
Becker,1970: 129.
24
Watts, 2005.
25
Sen, 1985: 28.
26
Sen, 1987: 16.
27
28
Ibid.
29
Sen, 1987: 36.
30
Sen, 1999: 75.
31
Sen, 1987: 36.
2
159
32
Sen, 1999: 75.

Sen, 1987: 36 (original emphasis).
34
Sen, 1999: 291 (emphasis added).
35
Sen, 1992: 40.
36
Nussbaum, 2000: 111-66; Qizilbash, 1997; Watts, 2004b.
37
Sen, 1999: 62-63.
38
Ibid.: 131.
39
Saito, 2003.
40
For an example of this, see Watts, 2002 and Archer et al, 2003.
41
See OHanlon and Holmes, 2003 for a thorough account of the educational experiences and
expectations of the Traveller community.
42
For a full account of Renatas personal story, see Watts and Bridges, 2004: 31-35.
43
Watts, 2004.
44
Watts, 2005.
45
Ball and Vincent, 1998.
46
Sen, 1999: 59.
47
Ibid.
48
Archer et al, 2003: 106.
49
See Watts, 2002.
50
Saito, 2003.
51
Sen, 1999: 75.
52
DfES, 2003: 2.
53
Ibid.: 57-66.
33
REFERENCES
Archer, L. and M. Hutchings (2000), Bettering Yourself ? Discourses of Risk, Cost and Benefit in Young
Working Class Non-Participants Constructions of HE, British Journal of Sociology of Education
21(4): 555-74
________, M. Hutchings and A. Ross (2003), Higher Education and Social Class: Issues of Exclusion
and Inclusion, London: Routledge
Ainley, P. (1994), Degrees of Difference: Higher Education in the 1990s, London: Lawrence and Wishart
________ (2003), Eight Statements of the Bleedingly Blindingly Obvious and a PS on Education as
Social Control, British Journal of Sociology of Education 24(3): 347-55
Ball, S., J. Davies, M. David and D. Reay (2002), Classification and Judgement: Social Class and the
Cognitive Structures of Choice of Higher Education, British Journal of Sociology of Education
23(1): 51-72
Ball, S. and C. Vincent (1998), I heard it on the Grapevin: Hot Knowledge and School Choice, British
Journal of Sociology of Education 19(3): 377-400
Becker, H. (1970), Sociological Work: Method and Substance, Chicago: Aldine
Brennan, J. and T. Shah (2003), Access to What? Converting Educational Opportunity into Employment
Opportunity, Milton Keynes: The Open University Press
Bridges, D. (2000), Back to the Future: The Higher Education Curriculum in the 21stt Century,
Cambridge Journal of Education 30(1): 37-55
________ (2004) Higher Education and the Regional Skills Agenda, paper presented at the British
Educational Research Association Annual Conference, Manchester
Brown, R. (2000), Higher Education in the Knowledge Age, in K.M. Gokulsing and C. DaCosta, eds,
A Compact for Higher Education, Aldershot: Ashgate
Dearing, R. (1997), Higher Education in the Learning Society Report of the National Committee of
Inquiry into Higher Education, London: HMSO
DfES, Department of Education and Science (2003), The Future of Higher Education, Norwich, HMSO
Drze, J. and A. Sen (1995), India: Economic Development and Social Opportunity, Oxford: Oxford
University Press
Egerton, M. and A. Halsey (1993), Trends in Social Class and Gender in Access to Higher Education in
Britain, Oxford Review of Education 19(2): 183-96
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Furlong, A. and F. Cartmel (1997), Young People and Social Change: Individualization and Risk in Late
Modernity, Buckingham, Open University Press
Goodson, I. (1995), The Story so Far: Personal Knowledge and the Political, in J. Hatch and
R. Wisniewski, eds, Life History and Narrative, London: The Falmer Press
Green, A. (1990), Education and State Formation: The Rise of Education Systems in England, France
and the USA, Basingstoke: Macmillan
HEFCE, Higher Education Funding Council for England (2001), The Wider Benefits of Higher
Education, Report 01/46, Bristol: HEFCE
Modood, T. and T. Acland, eds, (1998), Race and Higher Education, London: Policy Studies Institute
Nussbaum, M. (2000), Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach, Cambridge,
OHanlon, C and P. Holmes (2003), The Education of Gypsy and Traveller Children, Stoke-on-Trent:
Trentham Books
Plummer, G. (2000), Failing Working Class Girls, Stoke-on-Trent: Trentham Books
Qizilbash, M. (1997), A Weakness of the Capability Approach with respect to Gender Justice, Journal
of International Developmentt 9(2): 251-62
Reay, D. (2001), Finding or Losing Yourself?: Working-Class Relationships to Education, Journal of
Educational Policy 16(4): 333-46
Saito, M. (2003), Amartya Sens Capability Approach to Education: A Critical exploration, Journal of
Philosophy of Education 37(1): 17-33
Savage, M. and M. Egerton (1997), Social Mobility, Individual Ability and the Inheritance of Class
Inequality, Sociology 31(4): 645-72
Sen, A. (1985), Commodities and Capabilities, Amsterdam: Elsevier
_______ (1987), The Standard of Living, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
_______ (1992), Inequality Reexamined,
_______ (1999), Development as Freedom, Oxford: Oxford University Press
Smith, A. and F. Webster, eds, (1997), The Postmodern University? Contested Visions of Higher
Education in Society, London: The Open University Press
Watts, M. (2002), Everything that I am, Oxbridge is the Opposite: The Final Report of the Oxbridge
AIMS (Access Improvement for the Maintained Sector) Project, London: The Sutton Trust
_______ (2004), The Tensions between Well-being and Adjusted Preference in Choices Made Beyond
Compulsory Education, Von Hgel Institute Discussion Paper, Cambridge
_______ (2005), What IS Wrong with Widening Participation in Higher Education, paper presented at
Discourse, Power and Resistance 4, University of Plymouth
_______ and D. Bridges (2004) Whose Aspirations? What Achievement? An Investigation of the Life
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Association of Universities in the East of England
Williams, J., ed, (1997), Negotiating Access to HE, Buckingham: The Society for Research into Higher
Education and Open University Press
CHAPTER 9
VINCENT D. ROUGEAU
ENTER THE POOR

American Welfare Reform, Solidarity and the Capability of Human
Flourishing
INTRODUCTION
Martha Nussbaum has argued that in order to achieve real equality and promote
meaningful economic and social development, policy makers must determine, what
people are able to do and to be.1 Along with Amartya Sen, Nussbaum has
developed a capability approach that recognizes a persons capabilities as a
combination of various doings and beings, such as having self-respect, preserving
human dignity, taking part in the life of the community, and so on. The capability of
a person refers to various alternative combinations of functionings, any one of
whicha person can choose to have.2 The capability approach to development
allows people to be seen as ends in themselves rather than means or tools in the
hands of others.
In this respect, Nussbaum shares key understandings about the dignity of the
human person with Catholic social teaching and with the hermeneutical
philosophical approach of Paul Ricoeur. Both Ricoeur and Catholic social teaching
emphasize the importance of men and women as ends in themselves. Nussbaum has
noted that public policy should be aimed at a threshold of capacity beneath which
a life would be so impoverished that it will not be human at all, and she provides
a rich array of capabilities that are essential to this goal.3 Although some of these
capabilities deal with the importance of human interaction with others, most notably
the concept of affiliation with other human beings, the capability approach could be
enriched by a deeper exploration of the communal aspects of human existence and
their essential relationship to any meaningful understanding of human dignity. One
way Catholic social thought develops the importance of life in community with
others is through the concept of solidarity. Solidarity offers a new dimension to
Nussbaums understanding of capability by capturing the essential roles that sharing
and sacrifice play in forming a dignified human existence, and by emphasizing
community as an essential good for human persons.
The enhancement to Nussbaums understandings of capability that the concept
of solidarity provides can be demonstrated by considering the recent experiment of
welfare reform in the United States. The American debate over the provision of
161
162
VINCENT D. ROUGEAU
economic benefits to the poor reveals how the lack of solidarity in a society can
destroy or limit the capacities of its weakest members, and suggests that economic
and social development are incomplete without some attempt to nurture commitment
to others throughout the society as an important part of bringing dignity to the lives
of the poor.
In this chapter I will describe how a materialistic vision of society and the lack
of a sense of common purpose in American life have made it extremely difficult for
American law and public policy to confront poverty in the United States in a
meaningful way. After explaining how current American reforms of economic
assistance for the poor are creatures of a political rendering of poverty that fails to
take key American cultural problems into account, I will argue that American
welfare reform proceeds from an impoverished sense of the fundamental human
needs of the poor. For an alternative vision, I will draw not only on Nussbaums
concept of capability, but also on the philosophical work of Paul Ricoeur and on the
Christian ethical perspective of theologian David Hollenbach. Ricoeur and
Hollenbach demonstrate from two different perspectives why commitment to others
needs to be a central part of any meaningful notion of human flourishing and human
development. Together with Nussbaum and Sen, they lay a rich theoretical
groundwork for a reassessment of American welfare reform, one that takes seriously
the concept of capabilities based on a more comprehensive understanding of the
fundamental needs of the human person. Policy initiatives grounded in this approach
would offer the poor a more integrated role in American society, and would check
the ongoing erosion of a sense of communal responsibility in American culture.
CRITIQUING THE CULTURE THAT PRODUCED WELFARE REFORM
An intense American focus on individual freedom and free market liberalism has
distorted the ways Americans view the poor and the impacts of poverty within
American society. By and large, Americans take a relatively uncritical view of the
current state of American economic life and the costs the economic system exacts
from the nations social fabric. One way many people cope with the economic and
social stress inherent in American capitalism is by viewing their ability to avoid
poverty and dependence as a mark of strength and moral superiority. The poor thus
become weak, morally flawed, and ultimately, responsible for their own problems.
In his book, The War Against the Poor, Herbert Gans termed this the ideology of
undeservingness.4 One important consequence of this ideology is that:
If poor people do not behave according to the rules set by mainstream America, they
must be undeserving. They are undeserving because they believe in and therefore
practice bad values, suggesting that they do not want to be part of mainstream America
culturally or socially. As a result of bad values and practices, undeservingness has
become a major cause of contemporary poverty. If poor people gave up these values,
their poverty would decline automatically, and mainstream Americans would be ready
to help them, as they help other deserving people.5
The debates over the passage and renewal of the Personal Responsibility and
Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA)6 revealed this ideology
ENTER THE POOR
163
in full flower, most particularly in the view that participation in the paid labour force
should be a key index of whether a poor person deserves help from the state.7 Even
the key terms in the title of the legislation personal responsibility and work
opportunity demonstrate the centrality of individualistic and market-oriented
values in American welfare policy. Upon its passage, the PRWORA was hailed by
President Clinton as the end of welfare as we know it.8 What ended was the
political consensus that supported the concept of welfare as an entitlement provided
by the federal government.9
By the mid-1990s, the conservative political reaction to the social and economic
changes of the 1960s and 1970s had revealed important flaws and tensions in the
American system of economic provision for the poor.10 These social changes, and
the political reaction they helped produce, ought to have suggested to members of
Congress that it was time for a broad review of the American system of entitlements.
Instead, Depression-era and post-World War II entitlements that benefited those of
middle- and upper-income, such as the home mortgage interest deduction, farm
subsidies, and Social Security, became sacred cows, while the target for reduction in
spending was aid to the poor. [A]lthough government spending on the non-poor far
exceeds expenditures directed to the poor, it is the entitlement programs aimed at the
poor which have received the scrutiny of the budget-cutters and provided the
ammunition to the enemies of big government.11
The details of the changes wrought by the PRWORA are complex, but a focus
on the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (ATANF) program highlights
several key aspects of the legislation that are particularly significant. TANF is
funded through a block grant or lump-sum payment to each state, and the states
are given wide discretion to set their own criteria for eligibility. TANF also creates a
block grant to support childcare for low-income families. Adults receiving benefits
are required to begin working within two years of receiving aid, with certain
exceptions for parents of children under a year of age.12
Despite wide discretion given to the states in administering the programme,
certain limits placed on the use of the money are particularly notable for their role in
furthering the legislations stated goals of achieving independence through work,
reducing out-of-wedlock pregnancies, and encouraging the creation of two-parent
families.13 The money from these block grants cannot be used for any welfare
recipient who received welfare for more than five years, though up to 20 per cent of
a states welfare caseload can be exempted from this time limit. No funds may be
used for a recipient who does not work after two years. Failure to comply with these
and other work requirements means that a states block grant will be reduced. States
have the option to deny benefits to children born to welfare recipients, individuals
convicted of drug-related felonies, and unwed parents under age 18 who do not live
with an adult or attend school. In addition, newcomers from states with lower benefit
amounts can be given the lower amount for up to twelve months.14
Much has been made of the success of the TANF programs in getting welfare
recipients into jobs and off the welfare rolls. In recent legislative proposals to
reauthorize TANF, Congress found that: (1) there had been dramatic increases in the
employment and earnings of current and former welfare recipients; (2) welfare
dependency had plummeted; and (3) the teen birth rate had dropped.15 Given the
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VINCENT D. ROUGEAU
threat the states face of lost funding, the strict time limits for benefits, the numerous
reasons that can be employed to deny or terminate benefits, and a booming economy
in the early years of the legislation, it is not particularly surprising that the number
of welfare recipients decreased in the years immediately following the creation of
TANF. Yet, these touted successes also expose two fundamental weaknesses in the
PRWORA. First, a prolonged economic downturn will reveal the dark side of
denying poor people the economic assistance they need when unemployment is
rising and few low wage jobs are available.16 In fact, over the past three years, as an
economic recession has ebbed and flowed, the African-American unemployment
rate, currently in excess of 10 per cent has returned to its historical position of being
two times the rate for whites.17 Second, and more disturbing, is the social
engineering that ties TANF benefits to appropriate behaviour. The issues of
decline in traditional marriage, increase in out-of-wedlock births, and changes in
sexual morality are causing problems and challenges throughout American society.
Yet it is the poor who are being punished for not living up to values the rest of the
society seems anxious to reject. Denying benefits to poor children as a way of
punishing their mothers, for example, reveals the importance of the ideology of
undeservingness as an underlying rationale for this change in public policy.18
In order to understand the true import of the PWROWA, one must confront four
important cultural realities about how Americans view poverty and the poor. Two
deal with the impact racism has on American attitudes toward poverty. First, since
the 1960s, which was the point in American history during which the urban, nonwhite poor became particularly visible to mainstream American society, there has
been an expanded notion of undeservingness within the dichotomy of the deserving
and undeserving poor.19 Second, all discussions of American welfare policy are
either implicitly or explicitly racialized. Standard American tropes about the poor,
like welfare queen are racially charged and when used in public life, are designed
to decrease voter sympathy for the poor by manipulating racial fears. The remaining
two issues isolate key cultural traits that form American political attitudes. First,
because American society and culture are fundamentally materialist in their
orientation, the membership of the poor in the broader community tends to be
assessed based on material costs and benefits. Second, any concept of the common
good in American culture that might offer the poor a meaningful sense of belonging
tends to be undermined by American individualism and libertarianism, which has
made most Americans highly tolerant of huge disparities of wealth, and generally
unsympathetic to investment in public goods that might be of particular benefit to
the poor.
Racism and the Poor: More Undeserving, Less White, More Threatening
Until the 1960s, the American welfare system reflected the nations explicitly racist
culture. The welfare needs of African-Americans and other non-white groups were
often completely ignored in some states, typically in the South, while in others
discretionary rules were manipulated to deny or limit benefits.20 The deserving
poor that the system was designed to help were married white women who had lost
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165
wage-earner husbands and needed to support legitimate children. There was no

question that these respectable women should stay at home to raise their children
and that this activity should be encouraged by providing financial assistance. Poor
nonwhites were generally expected to fend for themselves. The social and political
upheaval of the 1960s forced American society to engage nonwhites and the poor as
full citizens endowed with rights, regardless of entrenched racial stereotypes or the
perceived immorality of their lifestyles. Over time, however, the expansion of
welfare to minorities, and the high concentration of the non-white poor in the urban
ghettoes of rapidly growing cities, made welfare policy the repository of Americas
unresolved, and increasingly unspoken, racial demons:
To understand public opposition to welfare then, we need to understand the publics
perception of welfare recipients. First, the American public thinks most people who
receive welfare are black, and second, the public thinks blacks are less committed to the
work ethic than other Americans. There exists now a widespread perception that
welfare has become a code word for race.21
The image of the typical welfare recipient in the United States has become the
black single-mother whose children have different, absent, fathers.22 For much of
American society poor is simply a way of saying black at a time when
American conceptions of liberal neutrality increasingly reject the idea of racespecific remedies and language when addressing social problems.23 Americans are
loathe to acknowledge the essential role of race-based chattel slavery and racial
segregation in the formation of the nations identity and culture, or the racism
inherent in the American attitude toward the poor. The image of the poor has long
been politically and culturally manipulated to create the impression that most poor
people are undeserving because they are unwilling to work (lazy and irresponsible
traits often culturally attributed to black men) and insist on having children outof-wedlock that they cannot support (promiscuous and matriarchal traits often
culturally attributed to black women). The work requirements, punitive time limits,
and the emphasis on behaviour modification through the encouragement of
traditional marriage and abstinence education become somewhat more loaded when
properly situated in an honestly rendered American cultural context.24
Because a large percentage of white Americans believe blacks are lazy, the
identification of blacks with poverty becomes a way of releasing mainstream society
from any moral responsibility or communal obligation for the poor and their
circumstances:
Long before the birth of the welfare state, the defenders of slavery argued that blacks
were unfit for freedom because they were too lackadaisical to survive on their own. This
stereotype has been traced by social psychologists through generations of white
Americans. Although some evidence suggests it is not as widespread as it once was, the
belief that blacks lack a commitment to the work ethic remains a popular perception
among whites. . .and an important influence in their political attitudes.25
These political attitudes are rooted in the American individualist ideology which,
while not rejecting the concept of welfare in principle for those who deserve to be
helped, places an inordinately high value on self-sufficiency and making it on your
own. Groups or individuals who question that ideology, either explicitly or
implicitly, and groups that labour under certain culturally constructed stereotypes
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VINCENT D. ROUGEAU
that suggest they are insufficiently hard-working, are immediately suspect and
tagged as undeserving.26
They are not My Poor: Individualism, Materialism and a Weak Sense of
Community
Along with the problem of dishonesty regarding race, many Americans also refuse
to recognize how the aggressive promotion of individual autonomy in American life
has undermined traditional family structures and other communal support systems
that were an essential part of the nations social stability. The breakdown in
American community life has manifested itself in a number of ways, and no social
group has escaped the consequences of a broad retreat from long-term marital
commitment, family obligation, employment security, and civic participation.27 It
has been, however, the weakest members of society who have suffered the most
from these changes. American children, for example, suffer disproportionately from
poverty and family breakdown.28 Furthermore, the rhetoric of the American welfare
reform debate and the plain language of the PRWORA demonstrate how materialism
distorts American community life and culture. American materialism has led to a
certain idealization and objectification of work as the primary means for achieving
social status (money) and meaning in ones life. Non-participation in the wage
labour market is seen as parasitic and leads to social ostracism, except in certain
highly circumscribed contexts (such as a married woman raising young children).29
Thus, the evaluation of the position of the poor in society tends to be based on a
rigid cost/benefit analysis that sees poor people as either net contributors to the
nations material wealth or as drains on taxpayer resources. American culture offers
the poor two primary ways of understanding their role in the broader community: as
independent workers, helping to create personal and societal wealth, or as dependent
parasites, drawing on collective resources they did not help to create and therefore
do not deserve.30
One pointed critique of welfare demonstrates the importance many Americans
place on individual autonomy and a limited role for government in relieving social
ills. Libertarians have argued that attempts to secure economic entitlements through
rights language distort the traditional idea of rights by moving away from an
emphasis on political liberties. Self-styled traditional or classical liberals view
rights as shields or weapons designed to protect individuals from the tyranny of the
state, and they tend to see the creation of entitlements as an ill-conceived attempt to
free individuals from the consequences of lifes inevitable harms, leading to the
creation of welfare rights.31 This critique is closely related to a broader neoconservative model of civil society that also sees rights primarily as tools of defence
against the state, and which identifies the freedom of civil society with economic
liberalism and the free market.32
In his book False Dawn, John Gray makes a particularly scathing critique of the
attempt by many American conservatives to recast free market capitalism as a
fundamental underpinning of liberal democracy and individual freedom:
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167
American capitalism [is] freedom in action. The structure of the American free market
coincide[s] with the imperatives of human rights. Who dares condemn the burgeoning
inequalities and social breakdown that free markets engender, when free markets are no
more than the right to individual freedom in the economic realm?
The philosophical foundations of these rights are flimsy and jerry-built. There is no
credible theory in which the particular freedoms of deregulated capitalism have the
standing of universal rights. The most plausible conceptions of rights are not founded on
seventeenth-century ideas about property but on modern notions of autonomy. Even
these are not universally applicable; they capture the experience only of those cultures
and individuals for whom the exercise of personal choice is more important than social
cohesion, the control of economic risk or any other public good. 33
When the tenets of free market capitalism become inseparable from the rhetoric
of individual freedom, inequalities that are exacerbated by capitalism start to be seen
as a necessary cost of democracy. Attempts by the state to temper economic
inequalities in the interest of promoting other communal and public goods are seen
as a tyrannical exercise of state power against the rights of free citizens.34 This is
where the American model of freedom, the product of a general American
propensity toward an absolutist construction of rights, begins to reveal its tendency
to breed selfishness and greed, and an indifference to the human needs of the poor.
As Mary Ann Glendon has written, this illusion of absoluteness,
promotes unrealistic expectation, heightens social conflict, and inhibits dialogue that
might lead towards consensus, accommodation, or at least the discovery of common
ground. In its relentless individualism, it fosters a climate that is inhospitable to
societys losers, and that systematically disadvantages caretakers and dependents.35
American society has drifted so deeply into an absolutist construction of

personal freedom that there is widespread public support for a reform of welfare
that in a purported effort to help places tremendous burdens on the poor,
particularly mothers of young children, while asking almost nothing of the broader
society. It also rejects a rich, humanistic understanding of community membership
or citizenship for poor people, and prevents the realization of many of the
capabilities that Nussbaum sees as fundamental to a truly meaningful human
existence or good life.
JUSTICE AND PARTICIPATION FOR THE AMERICAN POOR: PAUL
RICOEURS ETHICS AND THE CATHOLIC VISION OF SOLIDARITY
Paul Ricoeurs Ethics and Welfare Reform
Paul Ricoeur defines ethical intention as aiming at the good life, with and for
others, in just institutions.36 He notes further that, the good life is for each of us
the nebulus of ideas and dreams of achievements with regard to which a life is held
to be more or less fulfilled or unfulfilled:37
It is in unending work of interpretation applied to action and to oneself that we pursue
the search for adequation between what seems to us to be best with regard to our life as
a whole and the preferential choices that govern our practices. [B]etween our aim of
a good life and our particular choices a sort of hermeneutical circle is traced by virtue of
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VINCENT D. ROUGEAU
the back and forth motion between our idea of the good life and the most important
decisions of our existence. 38
On the ethical plane, Ricoeur calls this concept of self-interpretation selfesteem. From self-esteem, individuals move to the idea of solicitude for others,
which is benevolent spontaneity, intimately related to self-esteem within the
framework of the aim of the good life.39 Self-esteem is thus given a dialogic
dimension. For Ricoeur, solicitude is not simply an additional virtue added on to
self-esteem. Solicitude and self-esteem exist in critical relationship and the two
cannot be experienced or reflected upon one without the other.40
What makes an individual worthy of esteem is not her accomplishments but her
capacity. Capacity is the ability of an individual to evaluate herself and to judge
herself to be good. This judgment needs the mediating role of others to move from
capacity to realization. Ricoeurs idea of capacity is intimately related to the creation
of a just society. Individuals must be capable in order to develop the virtue of selfesteem, upon which so much of Ricoeurs ethical framework rests. Ricoeur notes
that this mediating role is critical for political theory:
Many philosophies presuppose a subject, complete and already fully endowed with
rights before entering into society. It results that this subjects participation in
community life is in principle contingent and revocable and that the individual is
correct in expecting from the state the protection of rights constituted outside of him or
her, without bearing any intrinsic obligation to participate in the burdens related to
perfecting the social bond. [This hypothesis fails] to recognize the mediating
g role of
others between capacity and realization.41
For individuals, the quest for the good life involves working toward the virtues
of self-esteem and solicitude, but this quest extends to institutions as well.
Institutions are the points of application for the virtue of justice, which extends
solicitude for the other to relationships with people that one does not know and may
not see. The wish to live well in just institutions arises from the same level of
morality as the desire for personal fulfilment and the reciprocity of friendship.42
When considering the issue of justice at an institutional level, a key concern is the
problem of the just distribution of social goods.43 Central to this problem is the
heterogeneous nature of these goods and the need to determine a means of
distribution of benefits and burdens among individuals in a society.44 The ethical
core of distributive justice is equality: Equality, however it is modulated, is to life
in institutions what solicitude is to interpersonal relations.45
The social contract political philosophies that Ricoeur critiques in his ethics
hark back to the libertarian attacks on entitlement rights in the United States.
Libertarian understandings of rights often dominate American political and social
policy debates, and they have had a profound affect on discussions of welfare
reform. In Ricoeurs terms, these views demonstrate a lack of appreciation for the
centrality of the mediating role of others, both in the individual quest for the good
life and in the effort to create just institutions. This reality is central to understanding
how social, economic and political exclusion affect the American poor, and limit
their capacities as understood by Ricoeur. Full participation in the structures of
society is not only essential for the poor themselves, but also for their fellow
citizens. As Ricoeur notes in The Just:
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169
Without institutional mediation, individuals are only the initial drafts of human persons.
Their belonging to a political body is necessary to their flourishing as human beings and
this mediation cannot be revoked. On the contrary, the citizens who issue from this
institutional mediation can only wish that every human being should, like them, enjoy
such political mediation, which when added to the necessary conditions stemming from
a philosophical anthropology, becomes a sufficient condition for the transition from the
capable human being to a real citizen.46
Justice demands that the poor be full participating members of society. In many
ways, welfare reform limits the social participation of the poor by limiting their
freedom to explore fully their human capacities. It is highly questionable that forcing
poor mothers to work allows these women, or their children for that matter, to fully
exercise the capacities necessary to develop self-esteem and solicitude for others.
This is not to say that there are no circumstances in which it is appropriate for
mothers receiving public assistance to work, only that a government policy that
mandates employment in return for benefits takes a very limited view of the
capacities of the poor and their role in society. When the freedom of the poor is
limited in this way, it is appropriate to question the justice of institutional structures
in American society and to raise questions regarding the just distribution of social
goods in the United States. The principle of solidarity in Catholic social thought
offers some additional ways to think about justice and participation for the American
poor that might provide some answers to these questions.
Solidarity, the Common Good and Christian Ethics
A Catholic understanding of rights begins with the notion of the inherent dignity of
the human person, who is created in the image and likeness of God. Rights and
duties come to every human, in the first place, not based on the grounds of another
social contract, but based on humans origin.47 Inseparable from this concept of
imago Dei is the concept that the human person is inherently social. Sociality is
understood to be as essential a part of our humanity as rationality. That is, the person
is viewed relationally by the relationships he or she has with God, other persons,
other creatures.48 Thus, Catholicism takes a communitarian view of the person
and rejects a contractarian view of social relations, and this echoes Ricoeurs
understanding of the essential mediating role of others in the full development of the
individual. The communitarian perspective of Catholic social teaching has led the
Church to place all rights within the context of community and to endorse a broader
array of rights than the classical liberal account of rights founded on personal
liberty The Catholic concern for a persons ability to participate in the life of a
community rather than any individualistic notion of freedom abstracted from social
relations offers an alternative formulation of entitlement rights.49
In his recent book The Common Good and Christian Ethics, theologian David
Hollenbach addresses directly the exclusion of the urban poor from mainstream
American life and argues that, a revival of a commitment to the common good and
a deeper sense of solidarity are preconditions for significant improvement in the
lives of the poor in the large cities of the United States.50 The concept of the
common good flows directly out of the Catholic understanding of the human
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VINCENT D. ROUGEAU
persons sacredness and sociability: the good of the individual never stands against
the good of society Being thrown into each others company is not a humiliation;
letting ones self be helped belongs to magnanimity. Humans desire to stand in a
relation of exchange with each other and to share their thoughts and possessions
with others.51 Translating this idea to the current circumstances of American public
life Hollenbach notes that, the common good of the public life is the realization of
the human capacity for intrinsically valuable relationships, not only a fulfillment of
the needs and deficiencies of individuals.52
Hence, the Catholic conception of the common good stresses the inherent value
of human relationships:
The common good, therefore, is not simply a means for attaining the private good of
individuals; it is a value to be pursued for its own sake. This suggests that a key aspect
of the common good can be described as the good of being a community at alll - the
good realized in the mutual relationships in and through which human beings achieve
their well-being.53
Human sacredness and the common good demand a recognition of, and an
ongoing response to, the legacy of slavery and racism inherent in American culture,
and an acknowledgment of how this legacy continues to demean individuals and
detract from the common good. Furthermore, members of the community who are
socially isolated, or unable to participate in the life of the community because they
lack basic security, food, health care, or housing, are unable to participate fully, if at
all, in the good that is democratic self-governance.54 In other words, the common
good of a republic fulfills needs that individuals cannot fulfill on their own and
simultaneously realizes non-instrumental values that can only be attained in our life
together.55
In his encyclical Sollicitudo rei socialis, Pope John Paul II described the
Catholic idea of solidarity as a recognition of the moral value of the interdependence
among individuals and nations. The virtue of solidarity: is a firm and
persevering determination to commit oneself to the common good; that is to say to
the good of all and of each individual because we are all really responsible for all.56
The exercise of solidarity within each society is valid when its members recognize one
another as persons. Those who are more influential, because they have a greater share of
goods and common services, should feel responsible for the weaker and be ready to
share with them all they possess. Those who are weaker, for their part, in the same spirit
of solidarity, should not adopt a purely passive attitude or one that is destructive of the
social fabric, but while claiming their legitimate rights, should do what they can for the
good of all.57
Solidarity is about sharing ones life with others. The sense of responsibility and
reciprocity that solidarity requires does not grow out of vague emotion or by
intellectual engagement, but through a lived experience of community.58 Together
with the common good, solidarity forms the foundation from which Catholic social
teaching promotes societal obligations to the poor. These are not private notions of
charity, but affirmative obligations to bring the poor into full community
membership in the life of a democratic republic by engaging their humanity, calling
them to responsible citizenship and participation, and by sharing material goods.
When viewed in tandem with this aspect of Catholic social teaching, Ricoeurs
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171
ethics add a philosophical rationale for a commitment to solidarity that emphasizes

the essential nature of engagement with others in the quest for an ethical life for
individuals and in the creation of a society rooted in justice and equality.
The current state of American culture and civic life, both of which lack any
coherent understanding of the common good, make solidarity with the poor quite
difficult in the United States. Hollenbach uses the example of the isolation of the
American poor in urban areas as one particularly obvious example of how the
structures of American society operate to deny social justice to the poor. Most
American metropolitan areas quarantine the poor in certain disfavoured areas of the
region. This structure is maintained and enhanced through various mechanisms,
particularly archaic forms of local government and systems of funding for public
services and schools that rely on property taxes, and this allows wealthy localities to
hoard revenue for the exclusive benefit of their residents.59 Recognizing this reality,
Hollenbach argues that the minimal demands of justice require lowering the
structural and economic barriers that prevent the inner-city poor from sharing in the
common good of their larger metropolitan areas.60
This marginalization of the inner-city poor is one measure of how far short the
metropolitan areas of the United States are falling from being communities whose
citizens are treated with the respect they deserve. The willingness of the well-off to
tolerate such conditions and even take actions that perpetuate them shows how far the
larger citizenry of the United States is from an effective commitment to the common
good.61
CONCLUSION
American welfare reform is a product of a limited view of the range of possibilities
for social integration of the poor, and an impoverished notion of the shared sacrifice
required to foster the solidarity that would lead to true social justice in the United
States. In Ricoeurs terms, the poor are not valued because of their lack of material
accomplishments and there is little concern for the need to develop the broad range
of their capacities. Welfare reform understands the role of poor in American society
primarily in material and punitive terms.
Unable to construct an honest shared narrative about the nations ongoing
struggle with its legacy of slavery and racism, and unable to recognize the role of
racism in the persistence of poverty, American politicians use coded racialist
imagery to pander to voters prejudices, to make financial assistance unpopular, and
to keep the poor at societys margins. Unable to confer meaning and value on virtues
like self-esteem and solicitude for others, Americans support a welfare reform that
sends poor mothers with children into the workforce so that they can justify their
membership in the broader society by earning their keep. Unwilling to fund public
services that they do not use, Americans consign the poor to isolation and
degradation, expecting people without automobiles to have mobility in a cardependent society; expecting people without decent schools to thrive in an
educational meritocracy that favours the wealthy; and expecting people without
money to accept without question the values of free market liberalism.
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VINCENT D. ROUGEAU
Paul Ricoeurs ethics and Catholic social teaching offer a different vision, one in
which all members of society assume responsibility for access to decent public
goods for everyone as one of the obligations of living in community. As with
Nussbaums capability approach, it is a vision that recognizes the human potential of
the poor by focusing on them as thinking, loving, and feeling human beings. With
the addition of the perspectives of Ricoeur and Hollenbach, policy-makers can begin
to see the ways in which current economic and social structures rely excessively on
an atomized view of personal freedom. It is only through an approach that is
grounded in community and solidarity with others that the full capacities of the poor
can be respected and realized, allowing them to build lives of dignity and to become
essential participants in the work of creating a truly just society.
Vincent D. Rougeau is Associate Professor at University of Notre Dame Law
School.
NOTES
1
Nussbaum, 2000: 5.
Nussbaum, 1993: 3.
3
Nussbaum, 2000: 81-83.
4
Gans, 1995: 6.
5
Ibid.
6
Pub. Law No. 104-193, 110 Stat. 2105 (codified as amended in scattered sections of 42 U.S.C.).
7
The historical dichotomy of the deserving and undeserving poor is central to any coherent understanding
of American economic support for the poor. In his study of 500 years of English poor laws, William
Quigley traces the statutory origins of the deserving/non-deserving poor distinction to the Statute of
Labourers in 1349. For those willing to work, the Statute attempted to regulate wages during a period of
acute labour shortages. For those who preferred to beg, which prior to this time had been a socially
acceptable way for the non-working poor to sustain themselves, the Statute allowed the able-bodied to
be seized and put to work. See generally,
y Quigley, 1996: 84-92. The regulation of the non-working
poor depended completely on whether the poor person was able to work. If they were able to work, the
choice was work at the wages offered or prison. If they were unable to work, then they were not
prohibited from begging. Ibid.: 90.
8
Predictably labelled a crisis, welfare became an issue in the 1992 presidential campaign when
candidate Bill Clinton promised to end welfare as we know it. Welfare dependency, he said, had
become a way of life. Handler, 1997: 5.
9
From the 1930s through the 1960s and 70s, American welfare policy provided a system of social
insurance (to protect workers against income loss from retirement, disability, unemployment, death of a
breadwinner) and means-tested public assistance (welfare), which transferred income to certain
deserving categories of destitute nonworkers. This meant a de facto separation of the welfare income
transfer program from the world of work and labor market policies. Heclo, 2001: 172.
10
Ibid.: 173. [A] program that stays the same while the society around it is changing can actually amount
to a transformed policy. Such policy morphing is essentially what happened to Washingtons welfare
program as the American society and economy evolved around it. Other developed countries have
also had to substantially modify, if not abandon, the older male-breadwinner vision of income security,
but in the United States the path to doing so has been uniquely contentious and socially divisive.
11
Himes, 1997: 509. Himes argues that, from the perspective of the Catholic tradition, the entrenched
tendency for American democracy to preference unnecessary benefits for the rich over fundamental
needs of the poor and the disadvantaged raises fundamental questions about the ability of the American
economic and political system to offer basic justice to all of its citizens: The Churchs teaching
appeals to our national and individual conscience to remember that in whatever strategies we adopt it is
2
ENTER THE POOR
173
the rights of the most needy which have priority over the entitlement claims of the rest of us. Ibid.:
529.
12
See Burke, 2002.
13
Hays, 2003: 17; The White House, 2002.
14
Katz, 1996: 2192-93; The White House, 2002.
15
Personal Responsibility, Work, and Family Promotion Act of 2002, H.R. 4737, 107th Cong. 4.1(a-c),
2(a) (2002).
16
For a recent assessment of the pros and cons of TANF reforms to welfare, see OConnor, 2003.
17
Henderson, 2005.
18
The PRWORA legislation also represents the triumph of an intellectual vision of welfare reform
championed by Charles Murray and Lawrence Mead. Murray, 1984 (arguing that American social
programmes since 1964 had failed by creating disincentives among the poor that discouraged
workforce participation, education, and traditional marriage/childbearing. Murray suggested ending
AFDC and other federal Great Society poverty programmes in favour of locally created and controlled
assistance programmes designed to move the poor toward self-sufficiency); Mead, 1986 (arguing that
social welfare recipients would benefit more from being expected to fulfil certain obligations in return
for support). In particular, Meads idea of a new paternalism toward the poor exposes key aspects of
the underlying theoretical framework that animates TANF. Mead, 1997 (explaining the trend toward
government programmes that supervise the lives of the poor in return for offering support, with
paternalism signifying close supervision of dependents and welfare reform primarily meaning that
aid recipients are required to work).
19
The massive internal migration of rural African-Americans from the South to the industrial cities of the
Northeast and Midwest, which peaked during the mid-20th century, added new complexity to American
racial relations. The relegation of African-Americans to socially and economically marginalized
ghettoes at a time when most Americans became urban dwellers helped to racialize the nations
understanding of poverty. On the African-American migration and its social implications for American
life, see Lemann, 1991.
20
Patterson, 1986: 68-70 (discussing how the emphasis on localism allowed states to apply prejudicial
criteria to families seeking assistance); Heclo, 2001: 173-174.
21
Gilens, 1999: 3.
22
This perception holds despite statistics, readily available, that demonstrate otherwise. In 2000, 31.1
million Americans were classified as poor by the U.S. Census Bureau and of this group, 21.29 million
were white and 7.9 million were black. Dalaker, 2001: 2. The rate of African-American poverty was 22
per cent, as opposed 9.4 per cent for whites. Although the black poverty rate is twice as high, three
times as many whites are poor. Much of the perception that poverty is a black problem can be
explained by certain racist social constructions that are inherent in American society. The racial image
of the black welfare dependent woman and her poverty-causing, extramarital childbearing jibes with
the social construction of black womanhood. Like the matriarch, who does not submit to her mans
authority, the welfare dependent single mother is a bad woman whose dominance wrecks the natural
order of things. Like Jezebel, who is overtly sexual and lascivious, the welfare dependent single
mothers hyper-sexuality is responsible for her anti-patriarchal childbearing. Like the breeder, whose
owner imposed on her a duty to procreate, the welfare dependent single mothers extramarital
childbearing is a learned response to the financial incentive provided by [welfare benefits]. Crooms,
1995: 626. For more on the racialist construction of the poor in the United States and how that has
contributed to a more punitive and less generous welfare programmes, see Gilens, 1999.
23
In the 400 year history of Anglo-American settlement in what is now the United States, AfricanAmericans have either been enslaved or subject to legally and socially sanctioned racial discrimination
for all but the last 40 years. The [socially constructed] truth about black women and welfarism
renders black poverty redundant. Blackness has become the conceptual norm for poverty. No one
can talk about the poor without violating the new rules of public discourse which state that race-specific
measures are automatically suspect, and feigned color-blindness, no matter how illusory, is the
politically popular way to remedy race and sex discrimination. This approach, however, fails to
appreciate the fact that the damage has already been done. The rhetoric remains racist as long as its
socially constructed meaning infuses it with a racial subtext. Crooms, 1995: 627-628.
24
In a recent interview, Ron Haskins, President Bushs chief welfare advisor stated: I am flabbergasted
by the values young people have. [He then goes on to describe a young, extraordinary African-
174
VINCENT D. ROUGEAU
American woman from Washington, D.C. who had two children by age 17 because everyone in her
community expected it and it was no big deal.] We should be very careful not to condemn single
parents, but we need to let kids know this is the wrong thing for you and for kids and for society. And
its irresponsible to do it. I think there is considerable agreement, and there has never been any
question about the American public. They think its wrong. OConnor, 2003: 16-7. It is significant
that, in order to make his point, Haskins chooses a young black woman from inner-city Washington,
DC, the population of which is approximately two-thirds black. He then goes on to juxtapose her values
and the values of her community with those of the American public, giving the impression that the
values of the poor, particularly poor blacks, are somehow other-worldly and not an integral part of the
myriad contradictions of American life and culture.
25
Ibid.: 78.
26
Gilens, 1999: 61-72.
27
For an in depth sociological study of the breakdown in social capital in the United States, see
Putnam, 2000.
28
Sixteen percent of American children lived in poverty in 2000, but this group constituted close to a
third of all of the nations poor (of the 31.1 million poor, 11.6 million were children), Dalaker, 2001: 2.
On the devastating psychological and social effects of an entrenched divorce culture on the lives of
middle-class American children, and the persistence of these effects well into adulthood, see
Wallerstein, 2000; Hetherington, 2002.
29
In the United States there is almost a manic desire to work, both for its own sake and more often in
order to make money an uncertain means to perhaps a forgotten end of greater human dignity. Work
is one important element in, but not identical with, the whole of an integrated life. Social ostracism
almost universally attaches to unemployment, especially in the case of those unable to support
themselves financially. Gregory, 1998: 133.
30
Amy Wax offers a particularly compelling theory of strong reciprocity to explain the typical
Americans hostility to providing public assistance to poor single mothers who do not work. See Wax,
2000: 257. The analysis suggests that a belief that unconditional public assistance for single mothers
violates norms of reciprocity begins with a perception that welfare mothers and their families give back
less to society than they receive. An imbalance between individual contribution and public support
does not pose a problem for strong reciprocity if the individual who calls upon group support is unable
to improve upon the situation or reduce her need for public funds. But whether the neediness of
many poor single mothers is in some sense involuntary is a hotly contested question that, for many
voters, yields a negative answer. Ibid.: 279.
31
Garcia, 1997: 219.
32
See for example Berger, 1977; Novak, 1991: 56-57.
33
Gray, 1998: 108.
34
See ONeill, 1993: 74. Justice, once the fruition of the common good, is rendered as fair or impartial
rules safeguarding individuals liberties and property rights. Vast inequalities of wealth are thereby
justified, for if, as is generally assumed, our social institutions rest on fair and impartial rules,
themselves derived from individual consent, poverty can no longer be regarded as a failure of moral
entitlement or right. To restrict my liberty (e.g., through tax or transfer policies) rather than through
voluntary charity is to conspire against my freedom.
35
Glendon, 1991: 14.
36
Ricoeur, 1992: 172.
37
Ibid.: 179.
38
Ibid.
39
Ibid.: 190.
40
Ibid.: 180.
41
Ibid.: 181.
42
Ricoeur, 2000: xiii.
43
Ibid.: 80.
44
Ricoeur, 1992: 201.
45
Ibid.: 202.
46
Ricoeur, 2000: 9-10.
47
Roos, 1998: 57.
48
Himes, 1997: 516.
ENTER THE POOR
175
49
Ibid.: 519-520.
Hollenbach, 2002: 173.
51
Elders, 1998: 107-108.
52
53
Ibid.: 81-82.
54
Ibid.: 82.
55
Ibid.: 83.
56
Pope John Paul II, 1997: 421.
57
Ibid.: 422.
58
Dorr, 1992: 332-333.
59
Many commentators have pointed out the tendency for suburban municipalities to become enclaves of
privilege under the legal cover of local autonomy. Huge disparities exist among jurisdictions in terms
of the level of public services offered, and there is a tendency to concentrate the least desirable land
uses in jurisdictions with high concentrations of poor or minority residents. See for example Briffault,
1996: 1136; Cashin, 2000: 1990.
60
61
Ibid.: 202.
50
REFERENCES
Berger, P. L. and R. J. Neuhaus. (1977), To Empower People: The Role of Mediating Structures in Public
Policy, Washington: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Briffault, R. (1996), The Local Government Boundary Problem in Metropolitan Areas. Stanford Law
Review 48: 1115-1171
Burke, V. (2002), Welfare Reform: An Issue Overview, Cong. Research Service
Cashin, S. (2000), Localism, Self-Interest, and the Tyranny of the Favored Quarter: Addressing the
Barriers to New Regionalism. Geogetown Law Journall 88: 1985-2048
Crooms, L. A. (1995), Dont Believe the Hype: Black Women, Patriarchy and the New Welfarism,
Howard Law Journall 38: 611-628
Dalaker, J. (2001). Poverty in the United States: 2000, United States Department of Commerce
Dorr, D. (1992), Option for the Poor: One Hundred Years of Vatican Social Teaching, Dublin: Gill and
Macmillan
Elders, L. J. (1998), Common Good as Goal and Governing Principle of Social Life: Interpretations and
Meaning, in D. A. Boileau, Principles of Catholic Social Thought, Milwaukee: Marquette
University Press. 103-117
Gans, H. J. (1995), The War Against the Poor: The Underclass and Antipovery Policy, New York:
BasicBooks
Garcia, J. L. A. (1997), Liberal Theory, Human Freedom, and the Politics of Sexual Morality, in P. J.
Weithman, ed., Religion and Contemporary Liberalism, Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame
Press. 218-252
Gilens, M. (1999), Why Americans Hate Welfare: Race, Media, and the Politics of Anti-Poverty Policy,
Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Glendon, M. A. (1991), Rights Talk: The Impoverishment of Political Discourse, New York: Free Press
Gray, J. (1998), False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism, London: Granta Books
Gregory, D. L. (1998), Catholic Labor Theory and the Transformation of Work. Washington and Lee
Law Review 45: 119-158
Handler, J. F. and Y. Hasenfeld. (1997), We the Poor People: Work, Poverty, & Welfare, New Haven:
Yale University Press
Hays, S. (2003), Flat Broke with Children: Women in the Age of Welfare Reform, New York: Oxford
University Press
d New
Hetherington, Dr. E. M. and J. Kelly. (2002), For Better or For Worse: Divorce Reconsidered,
York: Norton
Heclo, H. (2001), The Politics of Welfare Reform, in Rebecca M. Blank and Ron Haskins, eds, The
New World of Welfare. Washington D.C.: Brookings Institution Press. 169-220.
Henderson, N. (2005), Job Market Gives Hint of Recovery, The Washington Post, Feb. 5
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VINCENT D. ROUGEAU
Himes, K. R. (1997), Rights of Entitlement: A Roman Catholic Perspective, Notre Dame Journal of
Law Ethics and Public Policyy 11: 507-529
Hollenbach, S. J. D. (2002), The Common Good and Christian Ethics, New York: Cambridge University
Press
Katz, J. L. (1996), Provisions of Welfare Bill, 54 Cong. Q. Wkly. Rep. Aug. 3
Lemann, N. (1991), The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How it Changed America,
New York: Vintage
Mead, L. M. (1986), Beyond Entitlement: The Social Obligations of Citizenship, New York: Free Press
_____ (1997), The New Paternalism: Supervisory Approaches to Poverty, Washington D.C.: Brookings
Institute Press
Murray, C. A. (1984), Losing Ground: American Social Policy 1950-1980, New York: BasicBooks
Novak, M. (1991), The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism, 2nd. ed., New York: Simon and Schuster
Nussbaum, M. C. and A. Sen. (1993), Introduction, in M. C. Nussbaum and A. Sen, eds, The Quality of
Life, New York: Oxford University Press
OConnor, B. (2003), Moralism, Paternalism and Conservatism: A new American approach to the poor?
Mimeograph, Von Hgel Institute, Cambridge
ONeill, W. (1993), Poverty in the United States, in T. H. Sanks and G. Coleman, eds, Reading the
Signs of the Times: Resources for Social and Cultural Analysis, New York: Paulist Press
Patterson, J. T. (1986), Americas Struggle Against Poverty 1900-1985, Cambridge: Harvard University
Press
Pope John Paul II. (1992), Sollicitudo rei socialis, in D. J. OBrien and T. J. Shannon, eds, Catholic
Social Thought: The Documentary Heritage., Maryknoll: Orbis Books
Putnam, R. (2000), Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, New York:
Touchstone
Quigley, W. P. (1996), Five Hundred Years of English Poor Laws, 1349-1834: Regulating the Working
and Non-Working Poor, Akron Law Review 30: 73-128
Ricoeur, P. (2000), The Just, Trans. D. Pellauer, Chicago: University of Chicago Press
______ (1992), Oneself as Another, Trans. K. Blamey, Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Roos, L. (1998), The Human Person and Human Dignity as Basis of the Social Doctrine of the Church,
in D. A. Boileau, ed., Principles of Catholic Social Teaching, Milwaukee: Marquette University
Press
Wallerstein, Dr. J. S. (2000), The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: a 25 Year Landmark Study, New York:
Hyperion
Wax, A. L. (2000), The Constitution Under Clinton: A Critical Assessment: Rethinking Welfare Rights:
Reciprocity Norms, Reactive Attitudes and the Political Economy of Welfare Reform, Law and
Contemporary Problems 63: 257-297
White House, Working Toward Independence (2002), available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/
releases/2002/02/welfare-reform-announcement-book.html
CHAPTER 10
JULIE CLAGUE
PATENT INJUSTICE
Applying Sens Capability Approach to Biotechnologies
ESTABLISHING THE PHILOSOPHICAL AND MORAL FOUNDATIONS

Human development and human capabilities
Human development is about people, about expanding their choices to live full, creative
lives with freedom and dignity. Economic growth, increased trade and investment,
technological advance all are very important. But they are means, not ends.
Fundamental to expanding human choices is building human capabilities: the range of
things that people can be. The most basic capabilities for human development are living
a long and healthy life, being educated, having a decent standard of living and enjoying
political and civil freedoms to participate in the life of ones community.1
This statement, from the United Nations Development Programme Human

Development Report 2003, is a rich expression of a number of moral commitments
that are crucial not only for understanding human development but also for
understanding what it means for humans to live a worthwhile life in common with
one another. The elements that make up a worthwhile human life are of such
importance to human flourishing and requiring of promotion and protection, that
their special status has been expressed and enshrined in terminology that seeks to
mark out their value as a sine qua non of human existence. The UNDP refers to
them as capabilities: the range of things that people can be. In this respect the
Reportt is drawing on the growing number of thinkers and policy analysts who
employ a capability approach to human wellbeing, the chief proponent being
development economist and Nobel laureate, Amartya Sen who has overturned
modern economic theory by returning to its roots in anthropology: human beings
are not merely means of production, but also the end of the exercise.2
Drawing on Aristotles insight that wealth is a means to rather than the end of
human flourishing, Sen seeks a more holistic account of human development than
purely economic models allow.3 His major contribution lies in his putting issues of
poverty and development at the centre of economic theory and in his recognition that
authentic human development is a complex phenomenon comprising social, political
and economic dimensions and, as such, cannot be measured solely in financial terms
177
178
JULIE CLAGUE
by reference to income or gross national product. Rather, development can be better

assessed according to the extent of a persons capabilities what their substantive
freedoms enable them to be and do. These freedoms are both indicative of and a
means to human development. Thus, Sen states: in analysing social justice, there is
a strong case for judging individual advantage in terms of the capabilities that a
person has, that is, the substantive freedoms he or she enjoys to lead the kind of life
he or she has reason to value.4 In Sens model of development as freedom, the goal
of international development must be the eradication of the various (social, political
and economic) constraints that lock humans in poverty, deprivation and oppression:
Expansion of freedom is viewed both as the primary end and as the principal means of
development. Development consists of the removal of various types of unfreedoms that leave
people with little choice and little opportunity of exercising their reasoned agency. The removal
of substantive unfreedoms, it is argued here, is constitutive of development.5
Sens capability approach, expressed most clearly in Development As Freedom,

has enriched the development agenda and provided the anthropological and
philosophical underpinnings all too frequently omitted from economic models of
social progress. The result is economics with a human face, and it can offer a
powerful tool of analysis for an examination of some of the most taxing
contemporary challenges that confront humankind. In the discussion that follows,
the aim is to continue in the spirit of Sens project of achieving a more humanised
economy by applying his notion of development as freedom to one area of market
concern where the tension between economic growth and human development is
acute, and where a patent injustice has become visible which calls for international
redress.
Health and biotechnology
A definitive list of the elements that make up a worthwhile human life has
proved somewhat elusive in intellectual history; but an uncontroversial candidate for
inclusion as a constitutive dimension of human wellbeing is good health. Described
by the UNDP as a basic capability that humans should be enabled to achieve, health
is the key to human flourishing. Without it we cannot function effectively, and our
ability to participate in other areas of life such as work and education are severely
impeded. Economic growth, increased trade and investment, and technological
advance are also mentioned by the UNDP not as constitutive dimensions of human
wellbeing, but as means to its achievement. They are, perhaps, quintessential marks
of the modern age, and will be the chief subjects of this discussion. These too are
social phenomena: none have any meaning in isolation from social engagement.
These phenomena enable humans to be productive contributors to their social worlds
and presuppose communities of people working towards them. But these goods are
instrumental. Their value resides only in the extent to which they serve the good of
persons. And each has its shadow side. They may produce net beneficiaries, but
almost always at the expense of others; there are winners, but also losers. It is this
functional and moral ambivalence that will be subjected to scrutiny in this chapter,
with particular emphasis on what is (along with information technology) the most
important new technology to emerge since the industrial revolution: biotechnology.
PATENT INJUSTICE
179
Commercial investment in biotechnology is transforming both global health and

the world economy through the development of new drugs and gene-based
products.6 Herein lies a tension: for biotechnology is both a public good and also an
enormously profitable commodity. Like no previous technology, biotechnology has
cemented the link between public health and international trade. However, the key
mechanism for delivering the health and wealth benefits of biotechnology the
patent system that provides incentives for investment in research, is being underused by developing countries and over-used by powerful life science corporations.
The result is that the current practice of biotech patenting is further enhancing the
power of life science corporations in industrialised countries while impeding the
delivery of public health and stifling the technology transfer necessary for economic
development in low-income countries.
This has given rise to concerns at the international level that the commercialisation of biotechnology will heighten economic and health disparities
between the developed and developing nations. At the heart of the problem lie
questions over the effectiveness of market forces in the attainment of essential
development goals: whether private investment can ever be fully directed towards
the common good.
ANALYSING THE COMMERCIALISATION OF BIOTECHNOLOGY
Understanding biotechnology
Biotechnology forms an important part of the growing number of life science
industries. The broad definition of biotechnology offered by The United States
Office of Technology Assessment is still useful. Biotechnology, it stated, includes:
any technique that uses living organisms (or parts of organisms) to make or modify
products, to improve plants or animals, or to develop micro-organisms for specific
uses.7 This covers a wealth of cellular and biomolecular processes, some of which
have been utilized by humans for centuries, including fermentation, tissue culture
and plant and animal breeding. However, it is the scientific advances of the latter
half of the twentieth century that have led to the development of techniques such as
cell culture, bioprocessing, monoclonal antibody technology, recombinant DNA,
cloning, protein engineering, biosensors, nanobiotechnology and microarrays that
are at the forefront of todays biotechnology revolution.8 In short, biotechnology
represents a means of manipulating life-forms in the natural world for human
purposes using the scientific know-how of the life sciences and chemical
engineering.
The importance of biotechnology to humanity lies in its many useful
applications, the chief ones being in medicine, agriculture, food processing,
industrial manufacturing and environmental management. Already, biotechnology is
making an impact in these areas, but the new scientific and industrial techniques that
are emerging promise benefits that will significantly improve and extend human
life, contribute to sustainable development, increase productivity and combat
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JULIE CLAGUE
environmental degradation. One of the greatest hopes for biotechnology is its

potential to assist the human development of the poorest people and nations. For
example, some believe that the development of new seed products in agricultural
biotechnology will help overcome the worlds food shortages. However, it is the
medical applications of biotechnology that offer the greatest potential benefit to
humanity, by alleviating the disease burden and improving human health. For this
reason, health biotechnology is the largest and most lucrative of the new
biotechnology industries, and that is why it will form the focus of this discussion.9
Health biotechnology
One of the biggest perennial challenges for humankind is how to improve human
health and prevent untimely death. One aspect of this quest is professionalized
through the medical communitys pursuit of the prevention, treatment and cure of
disease. The capacity for medicine to achieve these goals was given an enormous
boost by the completion, at the turn of the century, of the Human Genome Project
(HGP) which has given rise to the research field of genomics. This decade-long,
international collaborative research project set itself the task of mapping and
sequencing all the genes in the human genome. The huge store of knowledge that
was gained from this work is helping researchers to identify the role genes play in
the various biochemical processes in the human body, and to identify the faulty
genes linked to hundreds of diseases. Similar sequencing work is identifying the
genomes of numerous human pathogens linked to communicable diseases that are
the scourge of developing countries (90 per cent of all infectious disease deaths
occur in the developing world). Knowledge of the genetic roots of health and disease
is a crucial weapon in fighting illness. Armed with this information, biotechnologists
can develop accurate diagnostic tests that diagnose disease prior to the onset of
symptoms, thereby improving prognosis. Testing can also indicate genetic
predisposition to diseases such as cancers and osteoporosis that enable early
preventive measures to be taken such as the adjustment of lifestyle, or change of
environment. Currently, most investment is directed towards the development of
biopharmaceuticals and diagnostics. Biotechnologists can genetically engineer
therapeutic proteins and hormones (such as human insulin and human growth
hormone) and develop cheaper, safer vaccines (e.g., against rabies and Hepatitis B)
with the future promise of vaccines for non-infectious diseases such as some cancers
too. Biotechnology is transforming the ways that drugs are discovered, designed,
tested and developed. New sophisticated drugs are tailored to the genetic make-up of
patients and target the biochemical source of the problem rather than treat the
symptoms. While cruder conventional drugs may interfere with benign biochemical
functions within the body leading to unwelcome side-effects, these gene-based
designer drugs avoid such carpet-bombing effects and the collateral damage this
causes. Gene therapy the ability to switch off or replace faulty genes is becoming
possible and the first gene therapy drugs for various forms of cancer are on the
market. Around the globe there are hundreds of biotech drug products, vaccines and
diagnostic tests in trials.10
PATENT INJUSTICE
181
In parallel with the advances in humankinds understanding of and ability

to manipulate genes, stem cell techniques should lead to the ability to replace
damaged or diseased tissue in order to repair injuries and correct disabilities.
Xenotransplantation may also become safe and feasible, allowing the transplantation
of animal cells and organs into the human body to make up for the acute shortage of
donor organs and tissue from humans. Although the healthcare applications of
biotechnology are still in their infancy, there are widespread expectations that future
improvements in the practice of medicine and disease management will be
intimately tied to advances in biotechnology.
Biotechnology as a commercial entreprise
Biotechnologys promise can only be translated into healthcare gains if there is
sufficient investment into the research and development (R&D) of biomedical
applications. Some of this R&D is publicly funded through government investment
in research institutes and universities. However, biotech research offers substantial
commercial opportunities and therefore attracts large sums of private capital
investment. The commercial promise of biotechnology has given rise to the
establishment of dedicated biotechnology firms (DBFs), most of which specialize in
developing healthcare products. The first was Genentech, formed in 1976, which
cloned human insulin the first biopharmaceutical product that, since 1982, has
been used worldwide in the treatment of diabetes. Most of these DBFs are based in
the United States of America where according to the Biotechnology Industry
Organization - there are 1,466 biotech companies, 318 of which are publicly held.11
The total value of publicly traded U.S. biotech companies was $311 billion as of
mid-March 2004.12 In order to appreciate the scale of investment in biotechnology:
in 2002 the U.S. biotech industry spent $20.5 billion on R&D.13 Europe, the second
largest investor in biotechnology, follows some way behind American
entrepreneurial activity, though it has more biotechnology companies (1570 as of
October 2002).14 According to the European Commission: Some estimates suggest
that by the year 2005 the European biotechnology market could be worth over EUR
100 billion. By the end of the decade, global markets, including sectors where life
sciences and biotechnology constitute a major portion of the new technology
applied, could amount to over EUR 2000 billion.15
It is not only DBFs, but also pharmaceutical companies that are investing heavily
in health biotechnology. Increasingly, the largest pharmaceutical companies are
expanding into other manufacturing sectors in which biotechnology plays a part,
leading to the formation of large life science corporations that have interests across a
number of industries including chemicals, pharmaceuticals and biotechnology.16
According to the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry, in 2001 the
leading life science corporations were (in descending order of size) Pfizer (US);
GlaxoSmithKline (UK), Merck & Co (USA), AstraZeneca (UK), Johnson &
Johnson (USA), Bristol-Myers Squibb (USA), Novartis (Switzerland), Aventis
(France), Pharmacia Corp (USA) & Abbott (USA). The total sales of these top ten
companies came to 114,694 million accounting for 47 per cent of the world
pharmaceutical market.17 This figure far outstrips the gross domestic product (GDP)
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of many countries, including a number of European nations.18 Of the leading twenty

firms, half are American and the remainder are European or Japanese. There are no
companies that originate from non-industrialized nations.
While drugs are cheap to manufacture, they are expensive to develop. It is
estimated that each new drug costs somewhere between $200 and $600 million
dollars to research and develop.19 The European Commission puts the figure at EUR
250 million.20 The development of pharmaceuticals is not just costly, it is also a
lengthy process, taking ten or fifteen years for products to reach the market.
Additionally, lengthy and costly clinical trials are required to avoid thalidomide-type
disasters. Biopharmaceutical R&D requires the investment of substantial sums of
money. Biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies therefore require incentives to
risk such financial outlay and a market share that will allow them to recoup on
investment; they also require legal protection against intellectual theft of ideas. The
commercialisation of biotechnology is therefore driven by the system of intellectual
property (IP) protection, especially through the filing of patents.
Biotechnology patenting
Intellectual property protection, as its name implies, is a legal instrument to
protect the monetary interests of those whose ingenuity and creativity lead to the
invention or design of a product or a process. Patents recognise ownership of the
invention or design and confer legal rights to the inventor that prevent others from
profiting from a copied or stolen version of the invention. The patent grants a
marketing monopoly to the patent holder for a fixed period of time (usually 20
years), within the geographical area covered by the patent. During this time, the
patent holder is free to charge whatever the market will stand for the product. If
others wish to make use of the invention during this time they must apply to
purchase a license from the patent holder. Not surprisingly, patent laws are most
extensive in the parts of the globe where scientific innovation is most concentrated.
The vast majority of patents are registered at three patent offices: the United States
Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), and the European and Japanese patent
offices. Intellectual property rights provide incentives to those who wish to benefit
financially from their creative endeavours. However, patents benefit more than
simply the patent holder. The promise of financial gain encourages investment and
speeds up the process of scientific advance, from which all, ultimately, benefit.
Moreover, patents require inventors to disclose the details of their invention in plain
language so that the knowledge is preserved for and made available to humanity,
rather than kept as a trade secret. At the end of the patent protection period this
scientific and technical know-how is public property and can be freely exploited by
others. IP rights, therefore, provide a means by which both inventors and the public
can benefit from the commercialisation of technology.
Patent protection is of central importance to the biotechnology industry, which is
research intensive and requires large capital investment.21 Every year since 1998, the
USPTO has granted over seven thousand biotech patents, most of which relate to
human health.22 The European Commission reports that patent applications from the
biotechnology and genetic engineering sectors to the European Patent Office have
PATENT INJUSTICE
183
increased drastically in the last decade.23 Though some biotech patents are held
by governments and universities, most are held by life science corporations,
pharmaceutical companies and DBFs. Companies that possess healthy patent
portfolios attract outside investment. Patents are also commodities that can be sold
to larger organisations that have the capital funds to carry through long-term
development and marketing of the biotech invention. In the case of
biopharmaceuticals, which may take between ten and fifteen years to reach the
market (leaving just five years of patent protection remaining), this trade in patents
(or the buying up of smaller companies with impressive R&D credentials) is an
important part of the commercial process. This has given rise to various mergers
with and acquisitions of smaller research-oriented biotech firms (as happened in the
case of Genentech). The result is that, increasingly, biotech patents are concentrated
in the hands of a small number of transnational life science corporations, limiting the
competition that reduces prices.24
Problems with biotech patents
The market forces that drive the system of intellectual property protection have
complex and important effects on the global development and production of
pharmaceuticals that in turn raise questions about humankinds ability to deliver
much needed health benefits on the ground. While patents may offer the most
efficient means to stimulate the production of useful humanitarian biomedical
products, there are concerns that commercial investment in biotechnology may in
some ways impede the delivery of health goals.
Since patents confer a market monopoly to the patent holder, high prices can be
charged for the final product. In terms of pharmaceuticals, this means life-saving
medicines may be priced beyond the reach of some peoples ability to pay. The
situation is particularly acute in developing countries where healthcare budgets tend
to be very low. According to the World Health Organisation: The least-developed
countries average approximately $13 per person per year in total health
expenditures, of which budgetary outlays are just $7. The other low-income
countries average approximately $24 per capita per year, of which budgetary outlays
are $13.25 The lack of affordability of life-saving medicines is a justice issue in its
own right. But high pricing of medicines can also impede public health goals and
damage a countrys economic performance. These issues have come to prominence
over the ongoing controversy surrounding access to anti-retroviral drugs for the 38
million people living with HIV/AIDS (one of the worlds greatest public health
threats) over 90 per cent of whom live in developing countries.26 High-level
international political pressure continues to be brought to bear on drug companies to
persuade them to reduce the cost of anti-retroviral therapies, or to relinquish their
patent monopolies.
As will be seen, additional IP mechanisms further impede the delivery of
affordable drugs (including biopharmaceuticals) to developing nations. To
compound this problem, while there are substantial incentives for DBFs and
pharmaceutical companies to develop cosmetic or other non-essential products (such
as cures for baldness) that promise high returns, there are few incentives to develop
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drugs that address the particular, localised medical problems of developing countries
(such as sleeping sickness) where no one can afford to buy them. Private investment
follows market demand rather than genuine need. Since developed nations account
for 90 per cent of world pharmaceutical sales, it is still the medical interests of the
industrialized world to which R&D is directed, rather than the health priorities of
countries that in any case cannot afford to purchase new medical products. The
United Nations Development Programme reports that [o]f 1,223 new drugs
marketed worldwide between 1975 and 1996, only 13 were developed to treat
tropical diseases and only 4 were the direct result of pharmaceutical industry
research.27 This has become an issue of considerable concern at the highest level of
the World Health Organisation.28 The lucrative nature of biotechnology has
heightened such concerns.
There are also indications that patents may sometimes hinder rather than promote
research and development into biomedical products.29 The first signs that this was
the case came during the 1990s. One influential study by Michael Heller and
Rebecca Eisenberg: Can Patents Deter Innovation? The Anticommons in
Biomedical Research suggested that the existence of patents creates hurdles and
incurs costs for researchers who seek to utilise the patented knowledge held by
others because of the time taken to obtain licenses and permissions from patent
holders which, ultimately, slows product development.30 In the case of Golden
Rice a rice genetically modified to contain vitamin A, invented by Ingo Potrykus
its commercial availability was delayed for two years because of the time taken to
obtain clearance from the companies and institutions that held the 70 product and
process patents associated with its creation.31 Patents can also deter healthy research
competition by blocking rivals access to potentially fruitful research avenues. These
examples show how the patenting process is not a perfect mechanism for delivering
the fruits of scientific breakthroughs.
IP LAW, ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND PUBLIC HEALTH
The TRIPs Agreement
Meanwhile, in the mid-1990s certain trade agreements were being struck that
ushered in a new age of rigorous, internationally agreed intellectual property rules.
In January 1995, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) which, since
1948 had dealt with rules concerning the trade in goods among nations, was replaced
by the World Trade Organization (WTO) the aim of which is to liberalise trade rules
in areas of goods, services and intellectual property. The WTO currently has 147
members with 29 other nations negotiating entry.32 At the same time as the WTO
came into being, the Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs)
Agreement was introduced for all members of the WTO.33 The aim was to establish
worldwide minimum standards on intellectual property protection and to harmonise
current laws and practice, with the overall effect of stimulating trade. Article 7 of
TRIPs states the rationale for IP protection:
PATENT INJUSTICE
185
The protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights should contribute to the
promotion of technological innovation and to the transfer and dissemination of
technology, to the mutual advantage of producers and users of technological knowledge
and in a manner conducive to social and economic welfare, and to a balance of rights
and obligations.
Prior to the TRIPs Agreement, not all countries had a system of intellectual
property protection. Where IP protection existed, laws varied from place to place.
Inventors had to file patent applications in each patent jurisdiction, and the process
was time consuming and complicated. TRIPs standardised rules such as the patent
protection period (20 years) and WTO member states that previously had little or no
IP protection (largely developing countries) were obliged to provide it (incurring
considerable implementation and enforcement costs), with the threat of trade
sanctions for those that failed to comply.34 IP law was further consolidated under the
World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Patent Cooperation Treaty. The
WIPO is a specialised agency of the United Nations (UN), which assists member
states in the implementation of IP protection by offering model laws and technical
assistance on the drafting of legislation. Under the Patent Cooperation Treaty it is
possible to file a single international patent application that is valid in many
countries.35 As a result, one patent can attract revenue across the globe the
equivalent of many single national patents. This offers a simplified and
economically advantageous process for those seeking patent protection.
IP law, and the TRIPs Agreement that standardises it, is complicated. It is
beyond the scope of this discussion to present a detailed account of either of these.
Furthermore, the long-term effects of TRIPs on world trade in general and
biotechnology in particular are still unclear, and subject to debate. Nevertheless, the
discussion that follows about the likely effects of TRIPs on the biotechnology
industry and the resultant knock-on effects on developing countries is based on welldocumented and authoritative sources that will be invoked in the next part of this
study.
The effects of the TRIPs Agreement on developing countries
The TRIPs Agreement has proven enormously controversial in terms of its
interpretation and scope. There is widespread international concern that TRIPs is
having a negative effect on the economic development and public health of the least
developed countries (LDCs).36 Biotechnology is implicated in both these respects.
Where no patent protection exists, inventions can be copied by rival companies
(so called free-riding) which forces down the market price of patented goods.
When technologies and goods are patent protected, the lack of competition means
producers can set a higher market price. The product is either imported (where
necessary) or produced locally under licence. The extension, under TRIPs, of patent
protection to all WTO member states will lead to increased revenues for producers
of patented goods the vast majority of which are based in the industrialised nations
of the Northern hemisphere. For this reason, the chief beneficiaries of expanded
patent protection are undoubtedly the richer nations. Industrialized countries hold 97
per cent of all patents and it is these countries that are more successful at securing
and exploiting patents through their well-established research facilities.37 Recent
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statistics bear this out. Consider the 29 countries that, in 1998, comprised
membership of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD). In 1998 these countries that make up 19 per cent of the worlds
population spent $520 billion on research and development. This sum is more than
the combined economic output of the 30 poorest nations. In the same year, these
OECD countries accounted for 91 per cent of all existing patents.38
It would be too simplistic to assume that industrialised nations alone benefit
under TRIPs. Producers plough back profits into R&D and further stimulate
innovation that will benefit all. Furthermore, TRIPs is seen to be advantageous for
world trade because the increased movement of patented goods boosts trade and
stimulates the global economy. Nevertheless, there are far fewer benefits for lowincome countries from expanded IP protection. This is chiefly because these
countries do not possess many lucrative patents. As the United Nations
Development Programme observes: [M]ore than 80 per cent of the patents that
have been granted in developing countries belong to residents of industrial
countries.39 For the less industrialised WTO countries required to enact compulsory
IP legislation there are considerable implementation costs. In addition, it is essential
to put in place expensive enforcement strategies. Poor enforcement encourages local
free-riding, which both deters foreign investment and can lead to hefty trade
sanctions. The only means by which developing countries can gain a foothold in the
exploitation of new technologies such as the expanding biotech field is to begin to
carry out the R&D necessary to enter the patenting game. However, developing
countries do not have the same capacity to develop and support a biotechnology
industry as the industrialised nations because they often lack the research and
technological infrastructure to encourage R&D. As the Opinion writer of The
Economistt observed: Putting in a rigorous patent system will not make Angola a
hotspot of biotechnology innovation any time soon; a license to drive is little use
without a car.40 The fort of developing countries tends to be manufacturing rather
than innovation. For this reason, capacity-building is a priority to enable developing
countries to build up the infrastructure that will allow them to compete with
industrialized countries. Countries that previously lacked IP laws now have to rely
on costly, patented imports rather than cheaper home-produced copies. Poorer
countries have no choice but to import patented products from the industrialized
North. Previously countries such as Japan were able to exploit the existence of less
stringent intellectual property regulations to develop their technological base. Under
TRIPs the same transfer of new ideas and technologies is more costly. Tighter patent
control is increasing the price of the technology transfer that is so crucial to the
economic development of poorer nations. The TRIPs Agreement provides some
scope to governments to override the IP system in certain circumstances. Thus,
article 8.2 states: Appropriate measures, provided that they are consistent with the
provisions of this Agreement, may be needed to prevent the abuse of intellectual
property rights by right holders or the resort to practices which unreasonably restrain
trade or adversely affect the international transfer of technology. However,
interpretation of these guidelines has been subject to widespread confusion and
dispute, and LDCs have feared the consequences of challenging the industrialised
nations on such sensitive trade matters. In its weighting in support of the patent
PATENT INJUSTICE
187
holder, the TRIPs Agreement is requiring developing countries to enact and enforce
legislation that will further disadvantage them in the global market. Clearly, the IP
system alone cannot be expected to carry the burden of both promoting biotech
benefits and ensuring their equitable distribution.
Under TRIPs, chemical and pharmaceutical products and processes are not
excluded from patentability. Prior to TRIPs developing countries with sufficient
manufacturing capacity such as Brazil, Egypt and India - intentionally excluded
drugs from patent protection, thereby allowing the local manufacture of lower cost
generic drugs. After a phase-in period, the least developed countries will no longer
be able to adopt these public health strategies. Under the new IP regime, the price of
pharmaceuticals that come onto the market will remain high, raising fears that this
will put them out of reach in developing countries. Article 8.1 of the TRIPs
Agreement permits nation states to override trade rules in the interests of public
health:
Members may, in formulating or amending their laws and regulations, adopt measures
necessary to protect public health and nutrition, and to promote the public interest in
sectors of vital importance to their socio-economic and technological development,
provided that such measures are consistent with the provision of this Agreement.
However, as with the matter of technology transfer, there has been significant
disagreement about the degree of flexibility that States have in practice.
The crisis over access to cheap anti-retrovirals used in the treatment of
HIV/AIDS focused international attention on the rights and wrongs of patenting. In
response to these concerns, the WTO published the Doha Declaration On The TRIPs
Agreement and Public Health in November 2001, which aimed to clarify the degree
to which States could override TRIPs in cases of public health and emergency.41
Article 4 of the Doha Declaration affirmed that TRIPs can and should be
implemented in a manner supportive of WTO members right to protect public
health and, in particular, to promote access to medicines for all. This explicitly
stated that national emergencies could be understood to include health crises caused
by HIV/AIDS, malaria and TB. In such exceptional cases, States are permitted to
grant a compulsory licence that permits a third party (usually a domestic
manufacturer) to produce the patented invention (e.g. an essential drug) without the
consent of the patent holder. The drug can then be sold at a lower price than would
otherwise be the case. However, compulsory licences do not constitute a solution for
those LDCs prevented from importing generic drugs that have insufficient
manufacturing capability to produce their own. The question of how to make
adequate provision in these cases is still to be resolved. With respect to
pharmaceutical products, LDC members now have until 1 January 2016 to
implement the TRIPs Agreement, deferring the problem of importing costly patented
drugs to a later date.
The Doha concessions were won, in part, because of increased sensitivity to the
needs of developing countries and improved lobbying by these nations. Since more
developing countries are now members of the WTO, there is better representation
of their interests. Developing countries and various non-governmental organisations
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continue to press for exceptions to drug patentability, for biodiversity protocols and
for proper recompense for the commercial exploitation of traditional knowledge and
genetic heritage. Nevertheless, despite the reassurances of Doha, there is still some
reluctance to interpret TRIPs too liberally on the part of developing nations who fear
costly litigation against powerful life science corporations or even trade sanctions
for non-compliance with trade rules. This fear arises because of the enormous
financial muscle and lobbying power of life science and pharmaceutical companies.
The life science companies who file most of the biotech patents have financial assets
that exceed the economic resources of a number of smaller developing nations, and
their importance to the economic performance of the industrialized countries gives
them enormous influence over the policy priorities of their respective nations. The
TRIPs Agreement exacerbates a situation in which public health is failed by private
investment.
The United Nations Development Programme, in its Human Development
Reportt 1999, expressed concern over the effects of TRIPs on pharmaceutical prices,
and about the negative effects of aggressive biotechnology patenting on developing
countries including the way this shapes research agendas, how it transfers
indigenous knowledge and resources from the Southern hemisphere and converts
them into marketable commodities such as medicines to be sold by the rich North,
and how the same trends are making technology transfer to the South more
expensive.42 The Human Development Reportt 2001 echoes these concerns, whilst
also focussing on how public policy strategies can harness emerging technologies
such as biotechnology for human development.43 The problem is that although
technology is a tool for development it is also a means of competitive advantage in
the global economy. These two interests, it contends, can only be reconciled through
coordinated international policy (not charity), because the objective of eradicating
poverty cannot be achieved through the market alone, and national policies are
insufficient to combat global market failures. The Reportt offers a detailed analysis
of the effects of the TRIPs Agreement on developing countries and points to the
disproportionate disadvantage that these countries currently suffer under TRIPs: A
single set of minimum rules may seem to create a level playing field, since one set of
rules applies to all. But as currently practiced, the game is not fair because the
players are of such unequal strength, economically and institutionally. The Report
therefore urges a raft of measures such as new public-private partnerships to fund
research focussed on the needs of low-income countries.44 This call to action was
repeated in the 2003 Report, which indicated the continuing lack of funding for
R&D: Despite enormous potential and recent advances in biotechnology, relatively
little investment goes into technology to solve the problems of poverty Rich
countries, despite their commitment in the TRIPS agreement, have taken no real
steps to share their technology in the interests of reducing poverty.45 In short, the
UNDP highlights the ambivalent status of biotechnology with regard to public
health due to the unfavourable patenting system that militates against health care
priorities in developing countries and stifles technology transfer.
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189
APPLYING SENS CAPABILITY APPROACH TO BIOTECHNOLOGY

The relevance of our shared humanity46
Paul Ricoeur has written in this volume about the need to promote an ethics of
mutual recognition and reciprocity. This appeal is particularly apt in the case of the
threat to human development brought about by current biotech patenting practices,
when people from the developed and developing world encounter one another face
to face across the economic and development gulf that divides them. But mutual
recognition is not the end of the matter. It is a beginning that triggers a response
(responsibility). The fruits of mutual recognition are solidarity as one of the
worlds great advocates of the concept, the late Pope John Paul II, stated in his
encyclical letter on human development, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis: The exercise of
solidarity within each society is valid when its members recognise one another as
persons.47 For John Paul, commitment to solidarity is the path to human
development.48 He describes the virtue of solidarity as a firm and persevering
determination to commit oneself to the common good; that is to say the good of all
and of each individual, because we are all really responsible for all.49 However, this
all-for-one-and-one-for-all ethic is running up against powerful commercial forces
that make the delivery of human development for the poorest extremely difficult to
achieve.
Sens capability approach as described in Development As Freedom offers a
resource for assessing the development potential of the biotech revolution, and
mobilising the international community. Sen begins from an Aristotelian-inspired
starting point that assumes that human flourishing is an irreducible social and
political affair that depends on mutual cooperation in order to achieve shared
goals.50 Human development, in this view, is a cooperative enterprise that cannot be
achieved individually. It requires involvement and participation by all concerned.
Sen also argues that our moral commitments (or sentiments to use Adam Smiths
terminology) are not superfluous to the economy. Rather they are the means by
which the economy can and must be humanised to serve human flourishing. Such
a civil economy goes beyond narrow motivations of competition, greed and selfinterest and mechanisms that concern only efficiency. In this respect, Sens approach
finds a precursor in the philosophical insights of the Scottish Enlightenment.51
Using Sens capability approach it is possible to ask whether the emergence of
biotechnologies is contributing to human development by expanding or reducing
personal freedom. In many respects the biotechnology revolution has the potential to
offer substantial economic growth and public health gains, undoubtedly expanding
the capabilities of many. However, it is clear that the concentration of biotechnologies in the developed world is hindering the distribution of these benefits
to those who stand to gain most in terms of the expansion of human capabilities. The
potential of biotechnology to reduce the unfreedoms that exist in the developed
world in terms of health, education, technological innovation and wealth creation is
being inhibited by the institutional financial mechanisms (such as the IP regime) that
should be unlocking these development goals.
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The central importance of biotechnology to public health and the global

economy, and the positive role that IP protection can play in this regard is beyond
dispute. Nevertheless, it is clear that a number of factors are conspiring to exclude
developing countries from full participation in the benefits of biotechnology, with
potentially dire consequences for health and economic development. These factors
transcend national interests and threaten humanity in ways that extend beyond the
geographical confines of the Southern hemisphere. The health and wellbeing of
the human community is interdependent on the flourishing of all its parts. As the
epidemiology of the HIV/AIDS pandemic has so vividly illustrated, risks to public
health in one part of the globe quickly become health concerns across continents,
and require global coordinated prevention strategies. Furthermore, poor health
reduces economic productivity. With respect to economic development, the model
that is now promoted by the international community is a long-term vision of
sustainable development for all (truly a common-wealth), as opposed to the
counter-productive get rich quick economic imperialism that hitherto has
dominated world trade since the inception of capitalism, in which the industrialized
nations have achieved economic prosperity often at the expense of resource rich
but economically marginalised nations. Recognition of humankinds interconnectedness and mutual self-interest with respect to health and development will
play a central role in the international communitys response to the advent of biotech
patenting.
However, the world economy, fuelled by the profit motive, competition, and
national interests, can efficiently produce much-needed goods but is powerless to
direct them to maximum humanitarian effect. Private and (to a lesser degree)
national interests are an inefficient means of producing public goods such as health.
For this reason, Sen has pointed to the need for supra-economic institutions and
mechanisms that by-pass traditional forms of wealth-creation:
For efficient provision of public goods, not only do we have to consider the possibility
of state action and social provisioning, we also have to examine the part that can be
played by the development of social values and of a sense of responsibility that may
reduce the need for forceful state action.52
Promoting human health and development is a task for all humanity, which
requires international cooperation. The shared action required to achieve these goals
is not easy, however. It requires the overcoming of structures, institutions and
political systems that have self-interest rather than justice at their heart. For
example, democratic governance operates on a short-term basis of electoral politics
and seldom looks beyond national interest to the longer-term achievement of public
goods that extend beyond national borders. A further obstacle in trying to secure
justice in the biotechnology sphere is that there is currently no international model of
governance with the authority and power to make and enforce policy that promotes
the interests of humanity as a whole. Despite the excellent work of the United
Nations system of organisations, these agencies have less authority than some of the
more powerful, economically robust nations that can shirk their responsibilities,
making compliance a problem.
PATENT INJUSTICE
191
Tackling the injustices of biotech patenting

The greatest relevance of ideas of justice lies in the identification of patent
injustice, on which reasoned agreement is possible.53 While philosophers and
political scientists search for consensus on a theory of justice, humans share an
innate sense of what is unjust. With respect to the current practice of biotech
patenting it is clear that some institutional transformation is required in the interests
of justice. At least three types of injustice need to be addressed. The neglect of
participatory justice is one dimension of the problem. Many countries are unable to
participate in the biotechnological revolution because they lack the resources and
capacity to compete against stronger research cultures and economies. This
disenfranchises people in the developing world. Rather than shaping their own
destiny and pursuing their legitimate interests they are subject to the decisionmaking and interests of others. This form of exclusion both harms those who are
excluded and limits alternative contributions to biotechnology that could focus on
previously neglected scientific and medical research. The same denial of agency
occurs when trade rules prevent affordable access to essential medicines. Countries
should be able to take control of their public health emergencies and plan for the
future through the use of strategies such as the granting of compulsory licences to
manufacture essential generic drugs. What is needed transcends charitable giving by
developed nations. The dignity of developing countries depends on human agency:
the capacity to act with purpose in order to make better their own lives and pursue
their legitimate interests. Currently developing countries are denied this basic
capability; execution of this substantive freedom in the interests of human
flourishing is curtailed. The work of Amartya Sen has indicated how development
goals are achieved not only by improving human wellbeing but also by enhancing
agency.54 Charity renders developing countries mere passive recipients of the agency
of others:
An approach to justice and development that concentrates on substantive freedoms
inescapably focuses on the agency and judgment of individuals; they cannot be seen
merely as patients to whom benefits will be dispensed by the process of development.
Responsible adults must be in charge of their own well-being; it is for them to decide
how to use their capabilities.55
There are clearly occasions when aid from richer nations is entirely appropriate.
However, following the principle of subsidiarity, assistance should only be given
when others cannot help themselves. The aim must be to empower developing
countries and enable them to be as self-sufficient and self-determining as possible.
Agency must be devolved and distributed to encourage maximum participation. This
limits the danger of interference by other States and encourages self-reliance.
Participatory justice also demands that each Member State be entitled to full and
equal participation in the decision-making and policy shaping processes that occur at
the WTO and in wider trade negotiations. The European Commission is now
committed to this principle under item 26 of its biotechnology strategy action plan.
However, the process by which the TRIPs Agreement was thrashed-out was not a
model of inclusion. Rather, certain economically powerful nations (e.g. the U.S.A.),
who had vested interests in the Agreement, were able to push through their agendas
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JULIE CLAGUE
in the absence of proper representation from developing countries at the negotiating

table when the trade rules were thrashed out.
The aim of TRIPs was to establish common procedural rules for intellectual
property protection and subject each country to the same regulatory framework. The
Agreement harmonises the rules of patenting to apply equally to all. In terms of
equality of treatment this contractual arrangement appears perfectly fair. However,
fair procedures do not guarantee fair outcomes. The broader context reveals the
advantage that such an arrangement confers to the richer nations and the pressure
that these countries can bring to bear on poorer trading partners in a position of
dependency on them. Some developing countries had little choice but to sign up to
TRIPs, or suffer longer-term aid and trade consequences. The UNDP Human
Development Report 2001 indicated how, because the TRIPs signatories have such
unequal technological and trading capabilities, developing countries are immediately
disadvantaged. As David Hollenbach states: The power relations operative in the
social context of an exchange must be considered before determining that the
agreement is just.56
This indicates a need for modes of redress such as those provided under
distributive and contributive justice. The term contributive justice was coined by
the United States National Conference of Catholic Bishops in their widely praised
Pastoral Letter, Economic Justice for Alll (1986).57 Contributive justice refers to the
obligation incumbent on all recipients of societal benefits to contribute to the
common good of society through responsible agency. In the words of the U.S.
Bishops: This form of justice can be called contributive, for it stresses the duty of
all who are able to help create the goods, services, and other nonmaterial or spiritual
values necessary for the welfare of the whole community.58 Currently, life science
corporations, and the industrialised nations that own them, are motivated by and
directing their agency towards their own self-interest. These companies and the
industrialized nations that receive their corporate taxes gain a disproportionate
benefit from the goods of biotechnology. In effect, they are free-riding by exploiting
their competitive advantage to the detriment of other countries, and failing to act on
their responsibility to contribute to the global common good. The challenge is to
find appropriate means by which the current recipients of biotech benefits can make
a more equitable contribution to the good of the global community of which they are
a part.
Distributive justice by which is meant fairness in terms of the distribution of
benefits, goods and services to those who have a right to them comes into play
because, at present, income, agency, power and research potential are concentrated
in the hands of a small proportion of the worlds population. Meanwhile, in lowincome countries, access to basic goods is unmet and human capabilities allowed to
wither. These extreme inequalities threaten international relations, human security
and solidarity. Because trade rules favour the economically successful countries, the
WTO has been unable (thus far) to deliver fair shares for the least developed
countries. The issue is particularly unjust in cases where lack of clarity in the TRIPs
Agreement has led to situations in which patents have been obtained by Westerners
for biotech products based on genetic resources and specimens harvested from the
bio-diverse South.
PATENT INJUSTICE
193
Benefit-sharing
The inequalities produced by the market in biotechnologies have given rise to
appeals for benefit-sharing agreements to be established in order to achieve a more
equitable distribution of resources. While this is a relatively recent phenomenon, the
moral roots of the appeal to sharing the financial and other benefits of new
technologies can be found in article 27 of the United Nations Universal Declaration
on Human Rights (1948) in which it states: Everyone has the right... to share in
scientific advancement and its benefits. Benefit-sharing mechanisms aim to provide
the means by which this can take place.
It was the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), formulated
at the close of the UN Conference on Environment and Development 1992, which
first argued for benefit-sharing, in terms of technology transfer and access to genetic
resources.59 The concept of benefit-sharing has since been taken up in a number of
other international discussions relevant for biotechnology. Echoing the UN
Declaration on Human Rights, UNESCOs Universal Declaration on the Human
Genome and Human Rights (1997) states:
In the framework of international co-operation with developing countries, States should
seek to encourage measures enabling developing countries to benefit from the
achievements of scientific and technological research so that their use in favour of
economic and social progress can be to the benefit of all.60
The most detailed and socially concerned exposition to date of the underlying
principles and issues related to benefit-sharing is that produced by the Ethics
Committee of the Human Genome Organisation which drew on the historical
background, possible definitions of community, beliefs about the common heritage
of humankind, and the principles of justice and solidarity in order to apply them to
the concept of benefit-sharing:61
At present there is a great inequality between the rich and poor nations in the direction
and priorities of research and in the distribution and access to the benefits thereof. When
there is a vast difference in power between those carrying out the research and the
participants, and when there is a possibility of substantial profit, considerations of
justice support the desirability of distributing some profits to respond to health care
needs.62
The notion of benefit sharing offers direct practical utility for public health
policy and technical knowledge-exchange and its basis in the robust philosophical
tradition of the common good provides the necessary theoretical underpinnings to
supplement ethical and legal frameworks, in order to establish an economically
credible and socially responsible international strategy for biotechnology.
Concluding remarks
The aim of this discussion has been to examine what is one of the gravest
international development challenges for humanity. It is my contention that there are
intellectual and moral resources in humankinds collective wisdom for thinking
about and responding to this challenge through a rejection of the liberal and
individualistic agenda of non-interference and self-interest in both morality and the
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economy, and the development of an international ethical and policy framework for
biotechnology based on human solidarity and social responsibility. Such an
approach finds its roots in the rich philosophical and political heritage of
humankind. In particular, a policy response that is attentive to the existence of
human capabilities offers a discourse that can be utilised across the worlds of public
policy and economics to express and delineate the humanitarian benefits of
biotechnology and the social responsibility of the international community.
Julie Clague is a Lecturer in Catholic Theology at the University of Glasgow, UK.
NOTES
1
UNDP, 2003: 28.

Sen, 1999: 296.
3
Cf Nichomachean Ethics, book 1, chapter 5.
4
Sen, 1999: 87.
5
Ibid.: xii.
6
For further discussion of the moral implications of the commercial exploitation of genetics see
Caulfield and Williams-Jones, 1999; Clague, 1998; Holm, 1999.
7
U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, 1989: 3.
8
For a detailed explanation of these techniques see Biotechnology Industry Organization, 2004.
9
The magazine New Internationalistt reports that in the United States, medical applications account for
over 90% of annual biotechnology sales (anon. Patents on Life: The Facts, New Internationalist, Issue
349, September 2002).
10
Biotechnology Industry Organization, 2004: 3.
11
Ibid.
12
Ibid.
13
Ibid.
14
European Commission, 2002a: 31.
15
European Commission, 2002b: 12.
16
UNDP, 1999: 67.
17
Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry.
18
For a list of GDP by country refer to World Development Indicators database, World Bank, July 2004.
19
See for example WHO and WTO, 2002: 93; UNDP, 2001:108.
20
European Commission, 2001: 23.
21
For a detailed history of the evolution of intellectual property law in this area see Dutfield, 2003.
22
Biotechnology Industry Organization, 2004: 5.
23
European Commission, 2002a: 32.
24
UNDP, 1999: 67.
25
WHO, 2001: 16.
26
Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), 2004.
27
UNDP, 2001: 3.
28
World Health Assembly, 2003.
29
Commission on Intellectual Property Rights, 2002: Chapter 6; UNDP, 1999: 73.
30
Heller and Eisenberg, 1998: 698-701.
31
Bruce, 2003: 261. For discussion of this case, and of how Golden Rice illustrates further weaknesses in
IP regimes see the Commission on Intellectual Property Rights, 2002: 115.
32
World Trade Organization (http://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/whatis_e/tif_e/org6_e.htm).
33
WTO, 1994.
34
For the reasons why developing countries signed up to the stringent requirements of TRIPS see
Dutfield, 2003:196-7.
35
World Intellectual Property Organization, 2002.
2
PATENT INJUSTICE
195
36
For further discussion on the effects of TRIPs on developing countries see OXFAM, 2001a,b; Shiva,
2001.
37
UNDP, 1999: 68.
38
UNDP, 2001: 3.
39
UNDP, 1999: 68.
40
Opinion: Imitation v inspiration: How poor countries can avoid the wrongs of intellectual property
rights, The Economist, 12 September 2002
41
WTO, 2001.
42
UNDP, 1999: 66-76.
43
UNDP, 2001: chapter 5.
44
UNDP, 2001: 7-8.
45
UNDP, 2003:158.
46
Sen, 1999: 283.
47
John Paul II, 1987: paragraph 39.
48
Ibid.
49
John Paul II, 1987: paragraph 38.
50
Sen, 1999: 289.
51
Ibid.: 269-272, 294-296.
52
Ibid.: 269.
53
Ibid.: 287.
54
Sen, 1999: 189-203.
55
Sen, 1999: 288.
56
57
United States National Conference of Catholic Bishops, 1986: paragraph 71. The term is taken up by
David Hollenbach in Hollenbach, 2002: 195-200.
58
Ibid.
59
United Nations, 1992: article 1.
60
UNESCO, 1997: article 19 (a.iii).
61
Human Genome Organization Ethics Committee, 2000: Section A.
62
Ibid. : Section E.
REFERENCES
Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (2004), Facts and Statistics from the pharmaceutical
industry, http://www.abpi.org.uk/statistics/section.asp?sect=1 (downloaded 2 July 2004)
Biotechnology Industry Organization (2004), BIO Editors and Reporters Guide to Biotechnology 20042005 (8th ed.), Washington DC: Biotechnology Industry Organization, June
Bruce, Donald (2003), Whose Genes Are They? Genetics, Patenting and the Churches, in C. DeaneDrummond (ed.), Brave New World? Theology, Ethics and the Human Genome, London:
Continuum/T & T Clark
Caulfield, T. and Williams-Jones (eds), The Commercialization of Genetic Research: Ethical, Legal, and
Policy Issues, New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Press
Clague, Julie (1998), Genetic Knowledge as a Commodity: The Human Genome Project, Markets and
Consumers, in M. Junker-Kenny and L.S. Cahill (eds) The Ethics of Genetic Engineering,
Concilium, April, 3-12
Commission on Intellectual Property Rights (2002), Report: Integrating Intellectual Property Rights and
Development Policy, London: UK Department of International Development London, September
Dutfield, Graham (2003), Intellectual Property Rights and the Life Science Industries: A Twentieth
Century History, Aldershot: Ashgate
European Commission (2002a) Development and Implications of Patent Law in the Field of
Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering, Report from the Commission to the European Parliament
and the Council [COM (2002) 545], Brussels
______ (2002b), Life Sciences and Biotechnology A Strategy for Europe. Communication from the
Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the Economic and Social Committee and the
196
JULIE CLAGUE
Committee of the Regions, [COM(2002) 27]. Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the
European Communities
______ (2001), Towards A Strategic Vision of Life Sciences and Biotechnology: Consultation Document,
Communication from the Commission [COM(2001) 454 final], Brussels
European Parliament (1998), Directive on the Legal Protection of Biotechnological Inventions,
(98/44/EC), article 5
Heller, Michael A. and Rebecca S. Eisenberg (1998), Can Patents Deter Innovation? The Anticommons
in Biomedical Research, Science 280.1: 698-701
Hollenbach, David (2002), The Common Good and Christian Ethics, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press
Holm, Sren (1999), Genetic Engineering and the North-South Divide, in A. Dyson and J. Harris (eds),
Ethics and Biotechnology, London: Routledge
Human Genome Organization Ethics Committee (2000), Statement on Benefit-Sharing, April 9
Human Genome Organisation (1995), Statement on the Patenting of DNA Sequences, January
John Paul II (1987), Sollicitudo rei socialis, Encyclical Letter for the Twentieth Anniversary of
Populorum Progressio
Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) (2004), Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic,
Geneva: UNAIDS
OXFAM (2001a), Fatal Side Effects: Medicine Patents under the Microscope, Oxford: OXFAM
______(2001b), Patent Injustice: How World Trade Rules Threaten The Health of Poor People, Oxford:
OXFAM
Sen, Amartya (1999), Development As Freedom, Oxford: Oxford University Press
Shiva, Vandana (2001), Protect Or Plunder? Understanding Intellectual Property Rights, London: Zed
Books
United Nations (1992), Convention on Biological Diversity, 5 June
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) (1999), Human Development Report: Globalization
With A Human Face, Oxford: Oxford University Press
_______(2001), Human Development Report: Making New Technologies Work For Human Development,
_______ (2003), Human Development Report: Millennium Development Goals: A Compact among
Nations to End Human Poverty, Oxford: Oxford University Press
United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) (1997), Universal
Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights, UNESCO: Paris, 11 November
United States Congress Office of Technology Assessment (1989), New Developments in Biotechnology:
Patenting Life Special Report. OTA-BA-370, Washington DC: US Government Printing Office,
April
United States National Conference of Catholic Bishops (1986), Economic Justice for All: Pastoral Letter
on Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S. Economy
World Health Assembly (2003), Intellectual Property Rights, Innovation and Public Health. 56th World
Health Assembly, 28 May
World Health Organisation (WHO) and World Trade Organization (WTO) (2002), WTO Agreements and
Public Health: A Joint Study By The WHO And The WTO Secretariat, Geneva
World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) (2002), Patent Cooperation Treaty. Geneva.
World Trade Organization, http://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/whatis_e/tif_e/org6_e.htm (downloaded
30 August 2004)
World Trade Organization (WTO) (1994), Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property
Rights (TRIPs)
_______ (2001), Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health, Doha, 14 November (WT/MIN
(01)/DEC/2)
INDEX
Accountability: 20-1, 54
Action (collective): 9, 48, 58
Action (public): 9, 48, 50, 51, 53, 121, 124
Alienation: 6-7, 117
Affiliation: 55, 86, 161
Agency: 19, 34, 3637, 51, 52, 53, 108,
127-8, 132, 136, 191
Apartheid: 6-7, 8, 74, 112
Aquinas: 84, 99, 103n65, 92, 94
Arendt, Hannah: 3-5, 94-5
Aristotle: 18, 19, 40-1, 87, 99, 119n61
Aspiration: 12, 143, 146, 150, 154, 157
Autonomy: 12, 88, 100, 109, 123, 137, 166
Bakhtin, Mikhail: 112-3, 116
Bengladesh: 91
Bhatt, Ela: 91
Biotechnology: 13, 178ssq
Bohmann, James 136
Brison, Susan: 107
Cady Stanton, Elizabeth: 98
Capitalism: 65, 74-5, 89, 162, 166-7, 190
Capability: 1-2, 17-8, 22, 28, 29, 31, 56,
68, 69, 78, 83, 87, 106, 122ssq, 149,
152, 161, 177, 189
Capability approach (see also
Nussbaum, Sen): 1-2, 9, 27ssq, 63,
83, 87, 121ssq, 148, 150, 153, 156,
158, 161, 178, 189
Capability to act (see also agency): 19
Capability to speak: 18-9, 106
Capability to tell (see also narratives):
19-20, 105ssq
Capability for work: 11-12, 122,
126ssq, 139
Central human capabilities: 1, 14, 32,
68n24, 87
Social capability: 63, 76, 77-8
Carnival: 112
Catholic Church: 6, 84, 192
Catholic Social Thinking: 10, 13, 75, 83,
85ssq, 161, 169-70
Charlesworth, Hilary: 87, 89
China: 50
Civil society: 55, 96, 99, 100, 166

Clinton, Bill: 163
Commitment: 56-8, 64, 162
Commodities: 1, 29, 30, 123, 124, 125,
129, 130, 132, 137
Compassion (see also emotion, solicitude):
86, 56, 91, 92, 97, 98, 99, 111
Conflict: 20, 23, 29
Consequentialism: 29, 38
Contract (social): 3, 65, 70, 168
Costa Rica: 37
Culture: 12, 39, 55, 76-7, 96, 164, 166
Democratic culture: 35, 77
Political culture: 68
Democracy: 9, 25, 36, 38-9, 49, 51-2, 53,
64, 69, 70, 72, 77, 105, 117, 167, 190
Liberal democracy: 73, 166
Debate (public): 32, 38, 53, 113, 136, 138
Decommodifaction (policies): 129-30
Derrida, Jacques: 118n26
Differend: 112
Dominican Republic: 31, 35-6
Dostoevsky: 112, 116
Drze, Jean: 39-40, 50-3
Dworkin, Richard: 123
Education: 30, 31, 34, 40, 48, 51, 68, 69,
74, 76, 92, 95, 96, 101, 151
Higher education: 12, 143ssq
Emotions: 86, 87-8, 95, 111
Employment (see also work, labour
markets): 11-2, 121, 126-8, 131-2, 151,
163, 169
Entitlement: 50, 51, 124, 125, 133, 139,
166, 169
Esteem: 8, 24-5
Self-esteem: 8, 13, 25, 168
European Commission: 181, 182, 191
European Employment Strategy: 131-2
Evil (see also fallibility): 40, 94-5, 78, 116
Fairness: 28, 55, 65-6, 67, 71
l 3-4, 40
Fallibility (see also evil):
198
INDEX
Family: 70, 85, 86, 89-90, 91, 93, 166

Famine: 9, 48, 49, 64, 79n10
Fichte: 22
Finnis, John: 55
Forgiveness: 94-5
Freedom (see also agency, capability,
liberty): 2, 4, 14, 22, 32, 34, 40, 42, 66,
83, 88, 125, 127, 149, 167, 178
Development as freedom: 28, 32, 42,
63, 71, 121, 178, 189
Freedom of choice: 32-3, 88, 90, 123,
126, 149, 155
Opportunity and process: 53, 127
Fritz Cates, Diana: 99
Functioning: 1, 29, 122-6, 135, 138, 149, 152
Gans, Herbert: 162
Gender (see also womens rights): 30,
83ssq
Glendon, Mary Ann: 167
Goldstone, Richard: 110
Good (the): 5, 9, 20, 27, 30, 33, 37, 41, 42,
69, 71, 72, 75, 80n30, 167, 170, 189
Common good: 2, 10, 13, 64, 75, 76,
84, 92, 94, 169-70, 192
Primary goods: 10, 24, 30, 68, 69, 70,
74, 148
Theory of the good: 30, 69
Gray, John: 88, 166-7
Gutierrez, Gustavo: 15n29
Habermas, Jrgen: 21
Harm: 33, 48, 56, 109
Hart, Stephen: 98
Health: 13, 31, 34, 51, 53, 73, 74, 82, 96,
178ssq
Hegel: 21-2, 23-4, 117
Hermeneutics: 3, 73, 77, 78, 161, 167
Hinduism: 77, 78
HIV/AIDS: 13, 183, 187
Hobbes: 22
Hollenbach, David: 162, 169-71, 192
Honneth, Axel: 22, 23
Human capital: 127, 132, 140n31
Human Development Report: 2, 177, 184,
188, 192
Human Genome Project: 180
Hunger (see also famine): 48, 48, 50, 51
Identity: 19-20, 25, 37, 55, 78, 93, 108,

151, 155
Ignatieff, Michael: 111
Imputability: 19, 20
India: 49-50, 51, 52-3, 54, 76-7
Inequality: 32, 39, 52, 65, 67, 88, 89, 144,
150, 167, 192-3
Injustice (see also unjust structures): 3, 5,
7, 9-13, 33, 47, 48, 55-7, 85, 101, 144,
145, 191
Institutions: 3, 27, 34-5, 43n35, 48-9, 52,
56, 63-4, 69, 71, 74, 78, 84, 88, 99-100,
123-4, 168, 190
John XXIII: 94, 96
John Paul II: 6n30, 70, 84, 85, 94, 95, 96,
189
Johnson, Elizabeth: 98
Joyce, James: 90
Justice (see also virtue): 5, 9, 10, 33, 40,
55, 65-71, 72-4, 84, 87, 96, 100, 105,
110, 118n26, 126, 146, 153, 172, 192
Theory of justice: 16, 28, 66, 68-70, 74,
191
Intergenerational justice: 75, 80n48
Kant: 19, 24, 54, 60n35, 72, 87
Law: 19, 23, 66
Natural law: 84, 85
Leon XIII: 94, 97n52
Liberalism: 2, 31, 75, 83, 85-90
Political liberalism: 30, 67, 69, 71, 88
Liberty (see also freedom, right): 66-7, 69,
70, 88
Lincoln, Abraham: 92
Lyotard, Jean-Franois: 112
MacIntyre, Alisdair: 19-20, 73-108
Maritain, Jacques: 38n37, 92-3
Markets: 5-6, 35, 47, 49, 50, 65, 68, 89,
167, 183
Labour markets: 11, 122, 126, 131-2,
134, 145
Marx, Karl: 74, 93, 102, 125, 132,
Mehta, Roma: 91
INDEX
Memory (see also rememberance): 20,
107, 114
Metz, Johann Baptist: 99
Millennium Development Goals: 33-4
Mimesis: 19
Muellbauer, John: 132
Nagel, Thomas: 66
Narratives: 4, 11, 19, 36, 42, 76, 77, 78,
95, 98, 107, 111, 115-7, 147
National Vocational Qualification: 148,
151
Nazism: 6, 74
Norms (social): 34, 125, 129, 136, 151
Nussbaum, Martha: 1, 10, 14, 32, 40, 68,
73, 83ssq, 161, 167
Obligation: 20, 24, 40, 80n48, 87
Imperfect obligations: 9, 54-5
ONeill, Onora: 60n35, 174n34
Participation (see also democracy): 53, 73
Patent (see also intellectual property
rights): 179-182-4, 191
Paul VI: 94
Personal Responsibility and Work
Opportunities Reconciliation Act: 162-4
Pharmaceutical companies: 181, 182, 188
Phronsis (see also practical reason):
40-1, 72
Pius XI, XII: 96
Poverty: 12, 28, 34, 39, 51, 75, 83, 121,
162ssq
Power: 4, 52, 68, 71, 109, 112
Powerlessness: 7, 53
Practical Reason: 40-1, 72, 73
Preferences (adaptive): 29, 134, 136, 149
Racism: 164, 165, 170, 171, 173n23
Rawls, John (see also political liberalism,
primary goods, theory of justice): 10,
14, 30, 63ssq, 87, 123
Basic structure of society: 70-2
Original position: 66, 67, 69, 71, 75
Realism (moral): 84
Recognition: 8, 17, 21, 23-5, 106
199
Mutual recognition: 21-2, 106, 109,

112, 117, 189
Self-recognition: 17-8, 106, 109, 112,
117
Social recognition: 128
Redistribution: 75, 93, 168, 187, 193
Relativism: 85
Religion: 77, 83, 85, 86, 91, 98-9
Remembrance: 4, 11, 114
Respect: 24, 79n26, 87
Responsibility (see also recognition,
solidarity): 8, 17, 42, 96, 127, 131, 162,
170, 189, 192, 194
Revenge: 105-6, 110
Ricoeur, Paul: 3-5, 8, 27, 33, 36, 40, 77-8,
91, 99, 106, 1-7, 112, 115, 161, 167-9,
189
Rights: 8, 17ssq, 55, 66, 68, 89, 106,
124-6, 166, 168
Civil and political rights: 24, 67, 68, 88,
89
Human rights: 2, 54-5, 71, 93, 94, 101,
167, 193
Intellectual property rights: 13, 182-8,
192
Social rights: 24, 124, 126, 127
Womens rights: 86, 94, 101
Roy, Arundati: 91
Sachs, Albie: 110
Self-Employed Womens Association
(SEWA, see also Bangladesh): 91
Self-interest: 48, 167, 190, 192, 193
Sen, Amartya: 1, 9, 10, 14, 27ssq, 48ssq,
63ssq, 83, 106, 121ssq, 144, 148-9, 161,
177-8, 189, 191
Sin (structural): 6-7, 94
Smith, Adam: 56, 189
Solicitude: 13, 99, 109, 168
Solidarity (see also responsibility, virtue):
39, 48, 54, 57, 94, 95, 99, 161, 169-70,
172, 189, 194
South Africa (see also apartheid):
d 105,
110, 113
Stiglitz, Joseph: 56
Stories (see also narratives): 11, 91,
105ssq
Structures (see also institutions): 3, 4, 5-7,
23, 27, 35, 36, 37, 39, 42, 47, 74, 85,
200
INDEX
88, 89, 90, 95, 108, 121, 123, 126, 137,

146, 153, 155, 157, 168, 171, 190
Subsidiarity: 96, 100, 137, 191
Symbol: 77, 91, 114
Taxation (see also redistribution): 67, 72,
74, 133, 171, 192
Taylor, Charles: 25
Torture: 109, 114
Travellers (Gypsies): 151-2, 159n41
Truth commission: 11, 105, 106, 113, 116
Tutu, Desmond (archbishop): 105
Unemployment (see also employment): 11,
121, 122, 124, 126, 133, 134, 164
United Kingdom: 12, 64, 74, 121-2,
143ssq
United Nations: 34, 100, 185, 193
United Nations Development Programme
(see Human Development Reports)
United States: 12-3, 98, 162ssq
Universalism: 87, 101
Utilitarianism: 2, 66, 146, 148

Utility: 1, 29, 30, 123
Vatican II (see also Catholic Church): 6,
93-4
Virtue (see also justice, solidarity): 10, 33,
60n35, 66, 73, 99, 168, 170
Voice: 11, 54, 123, 127, 135-7, 138
Welfare state: 124, 126, 129-30
Well-being: 30-1, 39, 64, 83, 123, 127-8,
149
Williams, Bernard: 17
Work (see also employment): 11-12, 96,
122, 126ssq, 139, 151-2
Workfare: 133, 134
World Health Organisation: 183
World Trade Organisation: 184
Zimbabwe: 79n10
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Transforming Unjust Structures: The Capability Approach

Sverine Deneulin, Mathias Nebel and Nicholas Sagovsky

The Capability Approach: Theoretical Discussion

Necessary Thickening: Ricoeurs Ethic of Justice as a

Structural Injustice and Democratic Practice: The

Capable Individuals and Just Institutions: Sen and Rawls

Justice for Women: Martha Nussbaum and Catholic Social

Lisa Sowle Cahill

Part II Transforming Unjust Structures: Five Case Studies

Narrative Capability: Telling Stories in the Search for

Teresa Godwin Phelps

Promoting Capability for Work: The Role of Local Actors

Jean-Michel Bonvin and Nicolas Farvaque

Enhancing Students Capabilities?: UK Higher Education

Enter the Poor: American Welfare Reform, Solidarity and

Patent Injustice: Applying Sens Capability Approach to

SVERINE DENEULIN, MATHIAS NEBEL AND NICHOLAS

TRANSFORMING UNJUST STRUCTURES

THE CAPABILITY APPROACH

SVERINE DENEULIN, MATHIAS NEBEL AND NICHOLAS SAGOVSKY

TRANSFORMING UNJUST STRUCTURES

SVERINE DENEULIN, MATHIAS NEBEL AND NICHOLAS SAGOVSKY

TRANSFORMING UNJUST STRUCTURES

SVERINE DENEULIN, MATHIAS NEBEL AND NICHOLAS SAGOVSKY

Unjust structures, or structures of sin, were said to be rooted in personal

TRANSFORMING UNJUST STRUCTURES

SVERINE DENEULIN, MATHIAS NEBEL AND NICHOLAS SAGOVSKY

joint efforts of numerous individual victims of apartheid in South Africa (together

SVERINE DENEULIN, MATHIAS NEBEL AND NICHOLAS SAGOVSKY

TRANSFORMING UNJUST STRUCTURES

SVERINE DENEULIN, MATHIAS NEBEL AND NICHOLAS SAGOVSKY

TRANSFORMING UNJUST STRUCTURES

SVERINE DENEULIN, MATHIAS NEBEL AND NICHOLAS SAGOVSKY

TRANSFORMING UNJUST STRUCTURES

SVERINE DENEULIN, MATHIAS NEBEL AND NICHOLAS SAGOVSKY

CAPABILITIES AND RIGHTS

CAPABILITIES AND RIGHTS

CAPABILITIES AND RIGHTS

CAPABILITIES AND MUTUAL RECOGNITION

CAPABILITIES AND RIGHTS

CAPABILITIES AND RIGHTS

A first concern is that Sens capability approach limits itself to finding an

theories upon actual policy decisions.9 Insofar as ideas contained in development

Ok. Es un problema para una buena

Indeed, the absence of a consensus about the predicate good is tainted by

quintessentially a social product: because there is a two-way relation between (1)

Creo que hay una falsa premisa aqui.

In addition, by affirming that states of affairs should be evaluated only according

Similarly, a truly human freedom-centred approach to development is based on a

Que no lo haga un aspecto central o

Sens development as freedom

Ricoeurs ethical vision

Promoting the freedoms of

Aiming at good living together on the basis of

Expressing individual agency

Exercising socio-historical agency through the

Sen, 1999b: xii.

Ricoeur, 1986: vii.